As the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump gets underway, a bombshell article in Time magazine has poured gasoline on the bonfire of divergent opinions about what democracy means.
The article, “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election,” describes the massive, behind-the-scenes effort to counter Trump’s lies about election fraud in order to preserve the integrity of the vote. At the same time, it exposes the secret organizations enlisting bipartisan support to suppress false information on social media sites.
Responding to the article, James Freeman writes in the Wall Street Journal, “Perhaps the most disturbing portion of the Time report is the description of the alleged effort to counter false political claims. Much of the political left has decided that censorship by media companies is superior to free and open political discourse.”
The Time article describes two of the groups involved in the effort to protect the vote:
Mike Podhorzer brought together a group of liberal strategists in the early 2000s which “led to the creation of the Analyst Institute, a secretive firm that applies scientific methods to political campaigns.”
“Laura Quinn, a veteran progressive operative who co-founded Catalist, began studying this problem [of the spread of conspiracy theories] a few years ago. She piloted a nameless, secret project, which she has never before publicly discussed, that tracked disinformation online and tried to figure out how to combat it.”
“The solution, she concluded, was to pressure platforms to enforce their rules, both by removing content or accounts that spread disinformation and by more aggressively policing it in the first place,” Freeman explained. “But it was really important, given the level of official disinformation, that they had those rules in place and were tagging things and taking them down.”
Time was praising the effort that saved the election, but others are observing that allowing social media platforms to censor content may pose a greater risk to democracy. Michael Rectenwald, the conservative former New York University professor who embraces anti-vaccination viewpoints and highlights incidents of conservative opinions being censored, found the Times article to be a vindication of what he has been saying. His CLG (Citizens for Legitimate Government) newsletter, which provides a digest of the news, carried this item:
“‘According to Time the election was “Fortified” but not rigged. Definitely not rigged,’ Donald Trump Jr. reacted. ‘This is insanity, but everyone should read to learn exactly how bad it was.’ ‘@Time comes right out and admits it,’ wrote Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo. ‘Dear God, did they just validate what Trump was saying the whole time??’ asked journalist Andray Domise.”
Freedom of speech is one of the tenets of the Constitution that Trump is relying upon to counter the charge that he incited the storming of the U.S. Capitol in January. His lawyers argue that he did not come out and say his followers should threaten lives, even though that is the message they took from his statements.
Living Up To Its Agreement
Senate Bill 99, introduced by six state senators and two state representatives, would adjust the limit on the amount of Rooms and Meals tax revenue returned to cities and towns. The Republicans who sponsored the bill, including Senate Majority Leader Jeb Bradley of Wolfeboro, would ensure that 40 percent of the net revenue is distributed annually to municipalities, as the state promised when the original bill was passed in 1967.
Laconia City Manager Scott Myers is one of those supporting the bill, writing, “For far too many years, the state had shortchanged municipalities on the agreed upon local share.” He continued, “For Laconia alone, the impact of not receiving our 40 percent share going back to just 2011 is over $6 million.”
The state has never met its 40 percent promise, although, in 1993, the statute was amended to catch up with what it owed by increasing the share until it met the 40 percent mark. The catch-up payments were suspended in 2008.
The Senate Ways and Means Committee held a virtual hearing on SB99 on Monday.
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