(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) Arizona Republican Kari Lake’s legal team scored a victory when the judge hearing her election integrity lawsuit against Maricopa County and state officials rejected the defense’s request Thursday for a directed verdict.
Defense attorneys from Democrat lawfare headquarters Perkins Coie had reportedly spent a majority of the trial, which started Wednesday, scrambling to counter witnesses called by Lake’s team in their bid to overturn the dubious results of the state’s widely-criticized botched 2022 gubernatorial election.
Arizona Democrat Katie Hobbs was named the winner in the disputed tilt, which was decided by a margin of less than 17,000 votes. Lake is trying to prove that Maricopa elections officials failed to properly verify tens of thousands voters signatures to a degree large enough that it skewed the election to Hobbs.
Perkins Coie's motion for a direct verdict.
DENIED.
They will have to put on a case.
— Kari Lake War Room (@KariLakeWarRoom) May 18, 2023
Lake attorney Kurt Olsen spent the trial’s first day producing videos, documents and witness testimonies describing systemic polling place failures on election day that overwhelmed workers struggling to verify loads of mail-in and provisional ballots.
Lake’s team focused Thursday on faulty signatures that they said plagued the verification process, with one demonstration that summarized keystrokes made by signature-verifiers on election day.
Signature-verification specialist Erich Speckin, who analyzed the data, said there were at least 70,000 instances in which a signature-verification determination was made in less than two seconds.
“I don’t believe it can be done,” he said.
Our expert witness just testified thousands of signatures were approved at a rate of 99.87% in under two seconds in Maricopa County.
This is not humanly possible.
It's also not signature verification.
This is rubber stamping bad ballots to alter the outcome of our election.
Defense attorneys reportedly tried to repeatedly disrupt witness testimony, to the point that their constant interruptions drew official rebuke.
“Judge Thompson is getting madder and madder at the defense attorneys during Kari Lake’s election trial,” tweetedArizona Sun Time’s reporter Rachel Alexander.
Kari Lake’s attorneys can’t get through 60 seconds of witness examination without an ‘objection’ from the other side. This is excruciating to watch. Is this normal?
“He just decimated former Perkins Coie attorney Craig Morgan, who had the nerve to TELL Thompson what court procedure should be, which was incredibly rude. Morgan was trying to stop Lake’s attorney Kurt Olsen from continuing to direct examine his witness. Thompson let Olsen continue,” Alexander reported.
If anyone was wondering it took the Perkins Coie's attorneys just 4 minutes to object after recess.
Overruled
— Kari Lake War Room (@KariLakeWarRoom) May 18, 2023
The attorneys for Hobbs, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and Maricopa County, had not called any witnesses when they asked Judge Peter Thompson to enter a judgment. The trial is slated to resume Friday.
Lake attended Thursday’s proceedings and sounded an optimistic note, while once again chastising Hobbs for making a mockery of election integrity and voters’ rights.
“This wouldn’t have been necessary if Maricopa hadn’t disenfranchised Arizonans. It wouldn’t have been necessary if they’d followed the law. It wouldn’t have been necessary if @katiehobbs hadn’t run her own election,” Lake tweeted. “Arizonans asked me to fight this fight for them. Here I Am.”
Arizonans don’t trust voting in person after our Election Day was sabotaged and we don’t trust mail-in ballots.
Today, in court, we proved how messed-up the ONLY security feature (signature verification) on mail-in ballots is.
(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., a radical member of the leftist Squad, introduced legislation that would force taxpayers to pay a hefty $14 trillion to black Americans.
The radical bill claims the U.S. has a “moral and legal obligation to provide reparations for the enslavement of Africans and its lasting harm on the lives of millions of Black people,” according to Breitbart. If passed, the bill would appropriate the staggering funds to close the alleged income gap between black Americans and other races.
“Black people in our country cannot wait any longer for our government to begin addressing each and every one of the extraordinary bits of harm, all of the harm it has caused since its founding,” Bush said at a Wednesday press conference in Capitol Hill.
Bush, one of the most radical members of the House of Representatives, has previously called for the defunding of police and said she would push for reparations to the descendants of slavery, a campaign promise that even Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., refused to endorse in 2019 when he ran for president.
CORI BUSH: "The United States has a moral & legal obligation to provide reparations for the enslavement of Africans."
NO WE DON’T. WE DON’T OWE YOU SHIT!
We’ve come so far since MLK marched to give us equal rights, and here’s that heifer Cori Bush sticking her hand out like…
Vice President Kamala Harris, as a candidate for president and U.S. senator, endorsed the idea.
The $14 trillion bill was calculated to reflect the cumulative effects of slavery, according to the pro-BLM lawmaker.
“Black people continue to bear the harms of slavery and its vestiges, through the Black-white wealth gap, segregation and redlining, disparities in health outcomes, a racist and destructive criminal legal system, and countless other ways,” she wrote in a press release.
Bush took to Twitter to tout the legislation, saying “Every step of the way, Black Americans have been intentionally pushed back economically. A debt is owed.”
A rush of corrections noted that the Democrat Party bore heavy responsibility, a fact Bush conveniently omitted.
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) May 18, 2023
“The systemic racism was perpetrated by democrats; slaves, JimCrow, the KKK. ALL democrats. THEY should pay reparations,” wrote one commentator. “I, nor my ancestors, had anything to do with it. I’m a second class citizen because of affirmative action. Why isn’t that considered reparations?”
Bush’s demands received considerable backlash on Twitter, with congressional candidate Lavern Spicer, a conservative black woman, declaring, “WE DON’T OWE YOU SHIT!”
Retired Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke, Jr., who is black, put it another way. “The new worm on the hook to keep blacks thinking that Democrats care about them,” he wrote. “It’s no longer voting rights or affirmative action.”
(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) A government watchdog agency revealed that approximately $20 million of taxpayer dollars were unlawfully paid to hundreds of federal government workers in the span of five years.
The U.S. Office of Special Counsel announced earlier this month that it alerted President Joe Biden and the U.S. Congress of an unlawful employment scheme involving the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, according to scathing testimony from two ATF whistleblowers.
“ATF unlawfully provided law enforcement pay and benefits to agents and investigators who filled non-law-enforcement positions, such as in human resources,” OSC announced on a May 2 press release. “These positions had been intentionally misclassified to be within the law enforcement job series.”
ATF for years unlawfully paid agents millions of dollars in wrongful benefits by providing law enforcement pay to agents filling non-law-enforcement positions. Over a five-year period, the cost was upwards of $20 million. https://t.co/5jD8mzeaC4
OSC said it found probable cause in the allegations and found a “long-standing misclassification of upper-level jobs, which resulted in ATF overpaying agents by up to $20 million over a five-year period.”
Once the watchdog agency notified ATF of the unlawful practices, ATF deferred to a third-party investigation by the Office of Personnel Management, which later found that top-level federal officials at ATF “acted outside of merit system principles and demonstrated disregard for the rule of law.”
At least 108 tax-paid employees were exposed to be in non-law-enforcement roles who had received multi-million-dollar benefits through “enhanced retirement” packages.The scheme, said OSC, resulted in ATF getting its authority to classify law enforcement roles.
Special Counsel Henry J. Kerner said that appropriate action was being taken to address the allegations. “I thank the whistleblowers for coming forward with these very serious allegations and am pleased that under OPM’s oversight, ATF has initiated corrective measures,” Kerner said, later warning that “progress toward full resolution has been slow.”
The national group Gun Owners of America said more needed to be done, noting that the report indicated the actual cost of the ATF swindle could be much higher.
“Yet, the Biden Administration has done nothing to withdraw its proposed budget for fiscal year 2024. Instead, The Biden Administration would rather reward ATF for its financial crimes with a 13.6% increase over the 2023 budget—raising the operating budget to nearly $2 billion,” the group wrote at ZeroHedge.
“Congress cannot turn a blind eye to ATF’s corruption and this rogue agency must be held accountable.”
(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) Conservative GOP lawmakers this week demanded accountability and declared that they intend to reopen at least four criminal investigations into Hillary and Bill Clinton that were shut down months before the 2016 election.
The explosive Clinton Cabal revelation was included in Special Counsel John Durham’s report, which documented the FBI in late 2014 starting to investigate claims from a ‘well-placed’ confidential source that two foreign governments were trying to make illegal donations to buy influence with Hillary Clinton while she was running for president.
Investigators even obtained documents of one alleged $2,700 illegal contribution that led to an additional “substantial” donation.
Durham also revealed that in early 2016, three different FBI field offices — in Washington, D.C., Little Rock, Arkansas, and New York — launched investigations into the Clinton Foundation for “possible criminal activity,” the Daily Mailreported.
One of the investigations was partially started because of statements that were made in journalist Peter Schweizer’s 2015 book, Clinton Cash. In the book, the author claimed that the Clintons’ charity was taking millions in donations from foreign governments trying to change US foreign policy while Hillary was Secretary of State.
All four criminal investigations, despite making progress, were shut down by senior officials, according to Durham.
Republican lawmakers said those investigations need to be relaunched for justice to be served.
“The Clintons had a team of people at the FBI running interference for them to avoid criminal culpability,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., ranking member of the House weaponization subcommittee investigating alleged abuses by the Justice Department and FBI.
“These matters absolutely warrant additional exposure and review,” Gaetz said.
Jason Chaffetz, a former Republican congressman and ex-House Oversight Committee chair, said the cases were wrongly terminated and should be reopened.
“They had the scent, they were on the trail and they were shut down by the higher-ups who had an obvious political desire to see Donald Trump lose and Hillary Clinton win,” he stated.
“It’s disgusting really. Absolutely these investigations should be revisited.”
That included suspending some of the employees and revoking the security clearances of others, Fox News reported.
The committee on Thursday morning released its interim staff report, which featured new whistleblower testimony from FBI employees exposing the “abuses and misconducts in the FBI,” along with other damning claims.
“The disclosures from these FBI employees highlight egregious abuse, misallocation of law enforcement resources and misconduct with the leadership ranks of the FBI,” the report stated.
The whistleblowers also described the FBI’s alleged “retaliatory conduct” against them “after making protected disclosures about what they believed in good faith to be wrong conduct.”
It came prior to a significant hearing in which the weaponization subcommittee received additional whistleblower testimony revealing, among other things, that the FBI had obstructed Jan. 6 investigations to protect its own informants.
The FBI sent a letter to the Republicans and Democrats on the Judiciary Committee ahead of Thursday’s hearing, explaining the reasons behind the punishments of some FBI employees, according to Fox News. However, the committees stated that the FBI appears to be broken under the leadership of Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland, as it has now become a political weapon.
“The leadership at the FBI and Justice Department have weaponized federal law enforcement against everyday Americans, seeking to silence those who dare to have a different viewpoint,” the committees noted.
In addition, the report further reveals that the bureau is currently engaging in a ‘purge’ of employees on the conservative side, following the whistleblowers’ testimonies. However, the committees vowed to continue investigating the “weaponization of the federal law enforcement apparatus.”
(By Casey Harper, The Center Square) Regardless of a slowdown in the rise of inflation, Americans report that higher prices are causing financial hardship, a new poll indicates.
Gallup released the poll data Thursday, which found that 61% of those surveyed say price hikes have caused financial hardship, up from 49% in January of last year. That 61% figure is a high point for Americans since Gallup began tracking the data in 2021, when inflation was growing faster.
“This may suggest that the cumulative effects of high prices over the past two years have taken a toll on consumers,” Gallup said.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics earlier this month released its Consumer Price Index, a key marker of inflation, which showed consumer prices rose 0.4% in April, contributing to a 4.9% increase over the last year. That figure is about double what most economists say is a healthy level of inflation.
Those price hikes have made it harder for Americans to make ends meet. Energy and food prices have hit Americans particularly hard. The BLS data showed food prices have risen 7.7% over the last year.
A separate Gallup poll found 35% of Americans rate inflation as the most important financial problem facing their family.
“The cost of owning or renting a home (11%) ranks a distant second to inflation, while having too much debt (9%) and a lack of money or low wages (7%) follow close behind,” Gallup said. “Energy costs, which was second to inflation last year amid high gas prices, has dropped to 5% as gas prices have fallen.”
Gallup found 15% say the hardship from inflation is severe and 46% say it is moderate. Lower-income Americans report suffering even more.
“Three-quarters of U.S. adults with an annual household income under $40,000 currently say rising prices are causing them at least moderate hardship, including 29% who say it is severe,” Gallup said. “Meanwhile, 65% of middle-income adults consider inflation to be a hardship, with 15% saying it is severe. At the same time, less than half of upper-income adults, 45%, say price increases have created hardship for them.”
(By Bethany Blankley, The Center Square) Twenty-four Republican governors have responded to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s call for help to secure its border with Mexico.
“The federal government’s response handling the expiration of Title 42 has represented a complete failure of the Biden Administration,” the governors said in a joint statement, referring to the end of the public health authority, Title 42, which expired at midnight on May 11.
Title 42 allowed for the quick expulsion of foreign nationals who’d entered the U.S. illegally during the COVID-19 pandemic. With its end, an estimated 150,000 foreign nationals from all over the world are waiting in Mexico to illegally enter the U.S. at any moment, border officials say.
This is after at least more than 7 million people have been apprehended or reported evading capture by law enforcement since President Joe Biden’s been in office.
The Biden administration recently sent 1,500 military personnel to the border and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security sent several thousand federal employees to help Border Patrol agents expedite processing of foreign nationals into the U.S., not to block their entry, administration officials have explained.
While doing so, the president and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas continue to argue the border is closed.
Within the past few days, groups of tens of thousands of foreign nationals arrived in the Rio Grande Valley and in other areas of Texas, overwhelming Border Patrol agents, officials said. Abbott has already sent more than 10,000 Texas National Guard troops to the border as border communities continue to declare emergencies.
“While the federal government has abdicated its duties, Republican governors stand ready to protect the U.S.-Mexico border and keep families safe,” the group of 24 governors said.
“Texas Governor Greg Abbott has exemplified leadership at a critical time, leading the way with Operation Lone Star, and deploying the Texas Tactical Border Force to prevent illegal crossings and keep the border secure,” they said. “We support the efforts to secure the border led by Governor Abbott.”
The governors pledging support in addition to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is deploying troops and resources in the next 24 hours, include those of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
They pledged their support within hours of Abbott’s request for help Tuesday afternoon.
In his letter to his fellow 49 governors, Abbott wote, “The flood of illegal border activity invited by the Biden Administration flows directly across the southern border into Texas communities, but this crisis does not stop in our state. Emboldened Mexican drug cartels and other transnational criminal enterprises profit off this chaos, smuggling people and dangerous drugs like fentanyl into communities nationwide.
“In the federal government’s absence, we, as Governors, must band together to combat President Biden’s ongoing border crisis and ensure the safety and security that all Americans deserve.”
The 24 governors agreed. No Democratic governors have responded as of publication. The Democratic governors of the three neighboring border states – New Mexico, Arizona and California – have made no similar requests as Abbott’s.
The Republican governors say they are sending support as the former ICE chief argues Biden administration policies are the greatest national security threat since 9/11 and the former CBP chief argues the issue isn’t about immigration but about national security, crime and terrorism. At least 125 known, suspected terrorists have been caught illegally entering the southern border this fiscal year so far.
Previously, in September 2021, 26 Republican governors, led by Abbott and former Arizona governor Doug Ducey, sent a letter to Biden requesting a meeting to discuss the border crisis. They say Biden never replied.
One month later, in October 2021, Republican governors then released ten policy solutions for the president to adopt to immediately secure the border, which he also ignored.
Last April, 26 Republican governors signed an agreement, the American Governor’s Border Strike Force, to commit to a cross-state law enforcement effort including sharing intelligence, strengthening analytical and cybersecurity efforts, and improving humanitarian efforts to protect children and families.
Republican governors have also previously sent personnel and resources to Arizona and Texas in response to requests from Abbott and Ducey through the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC). They’d again be sending support through EMAC, which allows participating states to provide resources to those that request aid in times of emergency. The governors argue the border crisis is such an emergency. The EMAC process also ensures resources and personnel deployed for emergency situations are eligible for FEMA reimbursement.
(By Casey Harper, The Center Square) A former FBI agent testified before Congress Thursday saying that the FBI manipulated data to make domestic terrorism linked to Jan. 6 seem like a nationwide phenomenon instead of an isolated incident.
The revelation came as part of a hearing held by the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government where FBI whistleblowers testified before lawmakers about abuse and politicization of the FBI. They also testified about backlash they received, even losing their jobs as retaliation for refusing to toe the narrative established by FBI leadership.
Steve Friend, a former FBI special agent who served five years on an FBI SWAT team and five years before that in local law enforcement in Georgia, made the claim about his former agency artificially inflating domestic terrorism data.
“Typically you would investigate Jan. 6 as one case with lots of subjects, but instead the decision was made to open up a separate case for every single individual there,” he said during the hearing. “And instead of, on paper, investigating them from the Washington field office, spreading and disseminating those to the field offices around the country, and if the individual lived in that area.”
“In effect,” he added. “It made it look like there was domestic terrorism cases and activities that were going on around the 56 field offices when in fact the cases were really all from Washington, D.C., and Washington had a task force that was responsible for calling the shots in all those cases.”
Friend said this is part of a trend for the federal law enforcement agency, adding that the FBI’s National Security Branch “has refocused counterterrorism from legitimate foreign actors to political opponents within our borders.”
The FBI had come under heavy fire for politicization on behalf of democratic interests in recent years. More evidence has emerged that the FBI may have played more of a role in inciting the events of Jan. 6 than previously thought.
A Government Accountability Office report released in February found the FBI and Capitol Police were aware of threats ahead of Jan. 6 but did not do enough about it.
The FBI has also been exposed for working with social media companies to censor Americans online, most notably by urging social media companies to shut down the Hunter Biden laptop story just before the 2020 election between President Joe Biden and then-president Donald Trump.
Social media company representatives say they were told by the FBI that the story was Russian disinformation.
That story has since been verified and is not disinformation, but not before the FBI’s decisions impacted the presidential election.
These and other concerns have put the federal law enforcement agency under serious scrutiny, in particular from Republican lawmakers like U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who chaired Thursday’s committee hearing and called the FBI “an agency focused on politics.”
An FBI spokesperson told The Center Square that the agency “has not and will not retaliate against individuals who make protected whistleblower disclosures.”
“While the crimes at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, occurred in Washington, D.C., the reality is many of the people who committed violent acts and other crimes that day traveled to the nation’s capital from multiple jurisdictions across the country,” the FBI said.
“The FBI investigates individuals who commit or intend to commit violence and other criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security. We do not conduct investigations based on a person’s views. We are committed to upholding the constitutional rights of all Americans and will never open an investigation based solely on First Amendment activity.”
(By Patrick Carroll, FEE) The regulatory body that oversees broadcasting in Canada has opened a public consultation about potentially banning Fox News from cable TV. Initiated on May 3, the process was prompted by the LGBTQ advocacy group Egale Canada, which asked for the consultation in early April in response to a Tucker Carlson segment that, in their view, “aimed to provoke hatred and violence against 2SLGBTQI communities.”
“This programming is in clear violation of Canadian broadcasting standards and has no place on Canadian broadcasting networks,” wrote Executive Director Helen Kennedy in an open letter. “Egale has experienced firsthand the hate that is generated from a single segment aired on Fox News in Canada. We cannot begin to imagine the broader impacts and potential rise in hate that might result from allowing more content like this to air in Canada.”
“The CRTC maintains a list of international channels cable, satellite and IPTV providers can include in their packages,” the National Postexplains. And the list does change every now and then. “In March 2022,” the Post writes, “the CRTC removed Russia Today and RT France from the list, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
Fox News was originally approved for Canadian viewers in 2004 and has been available in Canada ever since.
You Got a License for That?
The specific regulation Egale Canada is accusing Fox News of breaking is section 5(b) of the Television Broadcasting Regulations which prohibits broadcasts of “any abusive comment or abusive pictorial representation that, when taken in context, tends to or is likely to expose an individual or a group or class of individuals to hatred or contempt on the basis of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age or mental or physical disability.”
Prohibiting what amounts to hate speech on public television may sound somewhat reasonable, but it opens the door for considerable censorship, as this story illustrates. After all, who gets to define hate speech?
Now, we could quibble about this specific regulation and how it should be interpreted or whether it should even exist, but there’s a much bigger issue to highlight, namely, the issue of broadcasting regulations as such.
For context, radio and television broadcasters in Canada are heavily regulated, much more than most people realize.
For one, foreign ownership of broadcasters is significantly restricted. As University of Ottawa law professor Dr. Michael Geist notes, “The foreign ownership rules generally limit [broadcast] licensees to 20 percent foreign ownership (up to 33 percent for a holding company). This covers all types of broadcasters including television, radio, and broadcast distributors.”
There are also strict rules about the amount of Canadian content—often called CanCon—that broadcasters must feature. The Canadian YouTuber J.J. McCullough draws attention to these requirements in an article for the Washington Post. “It is thanks to the CRTC, for instance, that Canadian radio stations ‘must ensure that at least 35% of the Popular Music they broadcast each week is Canadian content,’” he writes, “and that Canadian television stations must ‘devote not less than 50 per cent of the evening broadcast period to the broadcasting of Canadian programs.’”
As you can imagine, there is a complex list of rules that specify exactly what is required for media to be considered “Canadian Content.” Many of the personnel involved must be Canadians, for instance, and at least 75% of program and post-production expenses must pay for services from Canadians or Canadian companies.
Notably, it was these CanCon requirements that prompted much of the backlash against the recently passed Bill C-11, also known as the Online Streaming Act, which essentially aims at expanding these kinds of requirements to online platforms such as Netflix and YouTube. The legislation, originally called Bill C-10, has become quite contentious in Canada over the past few years because of the new powers it gives the government to regulate online content platforms.
Now, some proponents of Bill C-11 point out that the current system is rigged against legacy media and in favor of online content creators, and that Bill C-11 will level the playing field. I agree the current system is unfair in this regard. But the way to fix that is to deregulate legacy media, not to impose the same restrictions they face on new media.
Plain Old Protectionism
Deregulating the broadcasting industry may sound radical, but it’s actually the status quo that should be cause for concern. Though they are rarely labeled as such, the current broadcasting regulations in Canada essentially amount to a form of protectionism. Steven Globerman comments on these regulations in a refreshingly candid 2014 study published by the Fraser Institute.
“One of the longest standing shibboleths of Canadian public policy is that popular culture industries in Canada must be financially supported and protected by government if those industries are to survive,” he writes. “While it is certainly incorrect to characterize all culture policy as protectionist, Canadian content regulations and foreign ownership limitations can be fairly characterized as such.”
The truth that is rarely spoken is that there’s a whole “Canadian Content” industry being propped up by these regulations, and it stands to lose a lot if the quotas and other protections were to disappear.
A group called SOCAN, which lobbies on behalf of Canadian musicians, eagerly boasts about the success of these regulations.
“In 1971, the Government of Canada recognized a problem: Canadian music wasn’t being played on Canadian radio, but foreign artists (mostly American) were. This meant that non-Canadian artists received the vast majority of radio airtime. Money flowed from Canada to support foreign talent rather than our Canadian talent.
As a result, Canadian Content (‘CanCon’) rules were implemented for radio stations. The CanCon rules require that at least 35 percent of music broadcast by radio stations during peak hours must meet a defined minimum level of ‘Canadian.’ In Québec, the level increases to up to 65 percent for French-language radio stations. The rest of the ‘traditional’ sector (television and cable) also has its own CanCon rules.
Those rules have been enormously successful in ensuring that Canada has its own cultural industry and Canadian voices, creating, sustaining, and building a significant source of monetary, emotional and cultural value. There are few, if any, aspects of Canadian culture that foster as much national pride and value as the success of music made in Canada.
Today, we’re facing a similar but new challenge: Canadian music isn’t sufficiently prominent on internet-based services.”
They go on to advocate for Bill C-10 (the precursor of Bill C-11) to “bring the Broadcasting Act into the digital era” because “it’s imperative to continue to sustain and build Canadian-made music.”
If this reminds you at all of the whole “Made in America” rhetoric, then you understand this issue perfectly. And if the emphasis on “preserving Canadian cultural identity” strikes you as a Baptist cover for a Bootlegger motive, then you’re really paying attention.
Why does this group favor the existing regulations and their expansion with Bill C-11? Because they represent the beneficiaries, the creators of “Canadian Content” who are given a competitive edge against their foreign counterparts with these quotas. An industry that owes much of its existence to a certain set of regulations tends to push pretty hard to keep those regulations. And if they can gain even more quotas in the increasingly dominant new media, all the better.
Toward a Free Market in Broadcasting
Should broadcasting regulations be scrapped then? Absolutely. Not only is broadcaster licensing protectionist, it’s also censorious, because it gives the government the power to control who is allowed to broadcast. The economist and political theorist Murray Rothbard discusses this in his book For a New Liberty.
“Because every station and every broadcaster must always look over its shoulder at the FCC, free expression in broadcasting is a sham. Is it any wonder that television opinion, when it is expressed at all on controversial issues, tends to be blandly in favor of the ‘Establishment’?”
Just imagine if the government tried to create licensing for books or newspapers, Rothbard says. “What we would all consider intolerable and totalitarian for the press and the book publishers is taken for granted in a medium which is now the most popular vehicle for expression and education: radio and television. Yet the principles in both cases are exactly the same.”
So what would a free market in broadcasting look like? Fortunately, we don’t have to guess. It would look like the internet, which the CRTC has thus far not been regulating (hence the push for Bill C-11). In other words, it would look like more choice and by-and-large better content.
Now, some might object to a free market in broadcasting because certain producers of “Canadian Content” would go under as a result. This is probably true, but success in content creation should depend on your ability to win viewers, not on your ability to rig the system in your favor.
Others may object because they believe patriotism and a national identity is important to foster. But it’s not the government’s place to foster culture. If the Chinese government imposed “Chinese Content” requirements for their broadcasters and had state-approved content creators to fill these quotas, wouldn’t that be considered an unwarranted interference with press freedom? Why should it be considered any less egregious when we do it?
Still others may object because of concerns about hate speech, such as with the Fox News case. But hate speech laws already exist in the Criminal Code. Now, whether those laws are themselves legitimate is another matter. For the purposes of this discussion the point is that specific hate speech regulations on broadcasters are at best redundant with existing laws and at worst censorious. In either case they shouldn’t exist.
A final objection that might be raised is that without regulation, Canadians would be allowed to watch foreign propaganda like Russia Today. And it’s true, RT would probably be on cable TV in a free market. But there’s a couple of points to make in response. First, it should be up to consumers to decide what constitutes state propaganda, not bureaucrats. And second, if your concern is genuinely that Canadians might be allowed to watch RT on TV, I would simply point out the irony that you are advocating for government censorship in the name of opposing authoritarianism.
Speaking of irony, it’s curious that Canadian politicians love to posture on the world stage about their commitment to freedom. If they actually want to practice freedom and not just pay lip service to it, the complete deregulation of broadcasting would be a great place to start.
Sanchez began her portion of the hearing by asking Allen—an FBI employee suspended after raising concerns about federal informants participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, protest—whether he believes that agents should be loyal the United States. Sanchez also asked Allen whether he thinks FBI agents should be expressing support for people who stormed the Capitol on J6.
Allen replied that, yes, he believes agents should be loyal, and no they shouldn’t be expressing support for criminal activity.
“You’re supposed to be apolitical,” Allen said. “You should not be voicing support for criminal conduct.”
Sanchez then sprung what she apparently thought was a “gotcha” moment. She asked Allen whether he operated the “Marcus Allen” Twitter account with the handle @MarcusA97050645, which has tweeted baseless conspiracy theories about Nancy Pelosi orchestrating J6.
However, “that is absolutely not my account,” Allen told Sanchez.
Despite this, Sanchez pressed on with her attack. She insisted that “an account under the name of Marcus Allen retweeted” another account that had proffered a Pelosi conspiracy theory.
Allen reiterated that it was not him.
“But do you agree with that statement?” Sanchez asked.
“No, ma’am,” Allen said.
At this point, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., interjected with a joke that perhaps the Twitter account quoted by Sanchez was owned by the former NFL star Marcus Allen.
Headline USA found the Twitter account referenced by Sanchez. It appears to be a bot.
Others on Twitter poked fun at Sanchez’s brainless blunder.
“Not sure if you heard @MarcusA97050645 but your Twitter account is now famous,” someone said.
“A purple hair is after you Marcus,” said someone else, referencing Sanchez’s dyed hair.
Sanchez’s gaffe was one of the few light-hearted moments of an otherwise heated and contentious hearing. Whistleblowers recounted how the FBI has deprived them of the ability to feed their families.
Before any other agents turn into whistleblowers, suspended agent Garrett O’Boyle encouraged them to pray about it.
BREAKING: F.B.I. Whistleblower, Garrett O’Boyle just ended today’s hearing with a chilling warning for future F.B.I Whistleblowers pic.twitter.com/7WiEpsome6
“I would advise them not to do it … The FBI will crush you. This government will crush you and your family if you try to expose the truth about things they are doing that are wrong,” he said. “We are all examples of that.”
