Speech Beating: The Democrats’ Fear Tactics on Facebook
“With the reestablishment of free speech protections on Twitter, the left has panicked that its control over social media” is fading, notes Jonathan Turley at Fox News. So “congressional censorship supporters” — including Rep. Adam Schiff (D-California) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) — “warn tell Facebook not to follow Twitter.” Indeed, “they want Facebook to expand its censorship”. “It is not difficult to see the cause of the alarm.” For years, “some public officials knew they could prevent the First Amendment by forcing these companies to block opposing viewpoints through the proxy. However, the public and the market can succeed where the Constitution has failed – and that is precisely what these officials fear.
Global desk: Tyrants had a bad year
It “has not been a good year for authoritarianism”, rejoices Jonah Goldberg in the Los Angeles Times, with “Putin badly blundered[ing] in its bid to take over Ukraine” and China changing “course after two years of ‘zero tolerance’ COVID policy” as “widespread spontaneous protests rocked the regime and challenged Xi’s grip on the to be able to “. At home, “the fashion for illiberalism may seem attractive, in part because the failures of our system are always on display, while authoritarianism remains hidden behind the facades of Potemkin”. So “I don’t think the Chinese regime is about to collapse any time soon, although I’m less gloomy about Russia or Iran”, but “I think they will all eventually collapse, because tyranny is not sustainable in the long term. .”
From right: Behind Cali’s middle-class flight
A recent ranking of the “most tax-friendly” states puts high-tax California in its Top 10 because its middle-class taxes are modest – but why, Steve Malanga of the City Journal wonders, there are hundreds of thousands middle and low income people. people fleeing California, whose net emigration “is the highest among the states”? Answer: Taxes are just “one piece of a philosophy of governance” which involves greater regulation and “more government pervasiveness”. High wealth and business taxes are costing California businesses that provide good middle-class jobs, and its onerous regulations are driving up housing costs. Thus, “low- and middle-income residents are eager to leave. A tax haven.
Journalist: Rise of the DeSantis Democrats
Olivia Reingold of The Free Press looks at ‘Florida voters who until recently identified as Democrats but chose in November to re-elect Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’, a black woman running a bar in a “gentleman’s club” to Democratic Palm Beach County Commissioner Dave Kerner, who says “I can tell you I’m not the only one.” Reingold finds that “these voters are not so different from the Reagan Democrats who fueled the Republican victory in the White House in 1980” because they “feel patronized, abandoned by the progressive elites who fund Democratic candidates and shape the party agenda” – but different in that they are “not confined to any class, constituency or ethnic category – although Democratic pollsters say Latinos were more likely to turn for DeSantis”. Above all, he is seen as “ effective” and “his voters don’t feel judged”. The question is, “are there any Democrat DeSantis elsewhere in America waiting to vote for the man in 2024?”
Watch Albany: The Award Winners’ Salary Rise Offer
“New York Part-Time Senators and Members are about to give themselves a 29% pay raise,” warn Ken Girardin and Cam Macdonald of the Empire Center Assembly, “which required, by far, the highest-paid state legislature.” This is in addition to “state medical, dental and vision coverage, retiree health coverage and state retirement benefits” and “reimbursements for their trip to Albany and per diems to cover the ”Accommodation and meals in Albany’. The bill would raise pay to $142,000 starting in January. California would be No. 2 at $122,694; then Jersey ($49,000) and Connecticut ($45,000)” in salary and benefits.” Hmm: New York resultants insist they work full-time, but the jobs they feature seem “more related to the deferrals’ desire to be re-elected than to any statutory or constitutional obligation “.
– Compiled by the Editorial Board of The Post