Maine Legislature Censures Member for Commenting on Male Participation in Female Sports.

Among other things, this situation raises First Amendment issues:

From FIRE:

Three weeks ago, Representative Laurel Libby of Maine’s 64th District posted on Facebook that a high school athlete won first place in girls’ pole vaulting at the Class B state championship after having competed the year before in the boys’ event and finishing in a tie for fifth place.

Libby’s post is constitutionally protected. She was speaking out about the policy in her state, set by the Maine High School Principals Association, that a high school athlete may participate in competitions for the gender with which they identify. Her post was also part of a nationwide debate. Maine Governor Janet Mills and President Trump have publicly sparred over the president’s executive order proposing to cut off education funding if states do not ban transgender athletes from competing in girls’ sports.

But just days after Libby’s post, the Maine House speaker and majority leader demanded she take it down. When she refused, the majority leader introduced a censure resolution — to be heard in the House the next day — because Libby’s post had included photos and the first name of the student, who is a minor. Libby sought to defend herself in the hastily called House vote, but was repeatedly cut off. The censure resolution passed 75-70 on a party-line vote.

If all the censure did was express disapproval of Libby’s actions, that would be one thing.

A state legislative body is entitled to express displeasure with a member’s actions, which by itself does not violate the First Amendment, as the Supreme Court recently ruled.

But in Libby’s case, the Maine House went further, much further. When Libby refused to apologize for her protected speech, the House speaker declared she would be barred from speaking on the House floor or voting on any legislation until she capitulated. Thus, the House majority party has precluded Libby from doing her job and effectively disenfranchised her constituents, end-running Maine constitutional provisions that say a representative cannot be expelled absent a two-thirds vote or recall election.

Continue ReadingMaine Legislature Censures Member for Commenting on Male Participation in Female Sports.

A Tale of Two Informational Ecosystems

My guiding assumption is that people rationally make decisions based upon the information they digest.  Thus, change their informational (media) ecosystem and you will change their beliefs and behavior, yet they will be convinced that they never changed--that they are the same person as always.

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Walter Kirn: “Censorship is Just for the Prisoners who’ve Escaped the Info Dome.”

Walter Kirn: "In a way, censorship is just for the prisoners who've escaped the info dome. You know, censorship is just shooting the escapees but keeping people inside the dome and playing that 24 hour news act like music as maybe the main imperative. That is the part that I think will truly blow our minds." Walter has perfectly expressed something that distresses me every hour of the waking day. There are vast numbers of people in the US who ingest only the high-calorie low nutrition version of information. I've referred to this type of "news" hundreds of times as "corporate news" or "legacy news," to distinguish it from the work of journalists who rely primarily upon the contributions of individuals who value the quality of the work. The legacy news includes five major players who I have often featured in my posts about the legacy media walking in lockstep to withhold information or to propagandize us. Once upon a time these outlets practiced something more akin to journalism, but we can see and hear with our own eyes and ears (I have posted hundreds of examples) that these outlets are no even trying to tell us what is going on around us, no longer offering conflicting perspectives, no longer putting their stories into historical perspectives and no longer pointing out the hypocrisy of public figures who make claims that conflict with their prior statements each day. Rather, in coordination with the U.S. government (and its many agencies, such as DHS, DOD, CIA as well as CIA's cutout USAID) our major news outlets work hard to convince consumers of pre-determined narratives--they write these plot first, then they go out to construct the facts. They do it like lawyers representing their clients in court--their is no attempt to be even-handed.  In short, they engage in Censorship and Propaganda: The modern day versions of Scylla and Charybdis.

People who continue trust legacy news outlets have been convinced by these big corporate-monied narrative-purveyors that alternate opinions and dissident voices are radioactive. As they did throughout COVID, they argue that dissidents are far more nefarious than people, way worse than people you merely find disagreeable. Dissidents must be avoided at all costs because the dangers they pose with their facts and opinions are existentially dangerous. This way of promulgating news is a great danger. For example, by pounding a simplistic narrative about Ukraine-Russia, as many as one million people have died and the US Treasury funds have been diverted from helping Americans to going into a big black hole.  As a result of stifling COVID dissidents, they got almost everything wrong (I found this on X recently:

Dozens of people with whom I once experienced mutual warm feelings have cooled. If we bump into  each other, they look at me with suspicion. Some of them have accused me of being a Republican, even though my views are largely consistent with what I've always believed, including this: for the 40 years during which I voted almost entirely for Democrats. That said, I have spent my entire life declaring my independence from tribes, political, religious and otherwise. I'm proud of that and I have a lot of criticism for Republicans too, for instance the elimination of the CFPB. My acquaintances on the new Left tend to show intense unwillingness to consider alternative facts and opinions. They are locked down and in fetal position. This is not happenstance--this behavior is the result of one the tectonic plates underlying their media ecosystem. In earlier times, their information diet might have been more varied, but they are now victims of Stockholm Syndrome:

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Today’s Report by Mike Benz: What Has Been Going on at USAID?

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I created the following transcript of Mike Benz' discussion with David Harris, Jr.:

David Harris 0:00

The Executive Director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, Mike, Benz, Mike, thank you for joining me this evening, brother. We're hearing some pretty disturbing accusations about some of where our tax dollars have gone via USAID. Give us the give us the facts.

Mike Benz 0:17

Well, that's because USAID is one of the most disturbing organizations in the entire federal government. It may rank number one. In fact, USAID is under the cloak of being a humanitarian aid organization designed to advance US foreign policy is assigned the dirtiest tasks that the State Department can't get caught doing, and that used to be done directly by the CIA, but USAID is able to act as essentially a covert operations division in the way that the CIA used to, except it's not even bound by the requirement of a presidential finding to authorize a covert operation that the CIA does, which is why what you've seen for the past Two decades is that most of the International scandals involving spy craft have had to deal with US aid rather than CIA. And if you understand the CIA's history with money laundering, you'll begin to get a glimpse at the size of the problem with US aid and why they won't let either congressional oversight or DOGE see their books.

David Harris 1:19

So have they? They literally have struck gold, the gold of corruption, the the massive bank vault that holds all the dirty details and secrets of the left and of the machine maybe left and right anybody complicit in basically selling out the American citizen and their tax dollars for the various actions, ...

Mike Benz 1:51

Well, I mean, just to your point about first, about the Democrat, Republican side, it's, it's both. While USAID employees contribute 97% to Democrats, the more pernicious concern, so far as I'm concerned, is actually the Blob Republicans, the internationalist Republicans who profit off of exploiting the American empire for their own private gain. For example, Bill Kristol, the famous never Trumper, who likens MAGA people to terrorists. He is a part of an organization that receives millions of dollars from USAID, and so to the barricades he goes to defend USAID. You find Liz Cheney was spawned out of USAID. USAID sister group, the National Endowment for Democracy, has a Democrat organization and a Republican organization, and that Republican organization, the International Republican Institute, gets about $100 million a year just for Republican profiteering off of US foreign policy.

And the problem is far deeper than wokeness. And I want people to really understand this. When the National Endowment for Democracy, the constant companion of USAID ... it was, was born out of a USAID memo in 1982 to give birth to the National Endowment for Democracy. But when, when they overthrew the government of Bangladesh four months ago, in September 2024--these are leaked documents that were published in the Gray Zone just just three months ago, the internal baseline assessment that the IRI submitted to the State Department was that the only groups that they could muster to form an opposition group against the sitting government were gay and transgender groups, were two racial minority groups within Bangladesh and youth and student groups who predominantly listen to rap music. So what do they turn around and do? IRI in tandem with USAID, they funded Bangladeshi rap groups. They funded transgender dance festivals, and they funded the local universities in order to push radicalization messages to overthrow the democratically elected government. But that was Republicans. That was the International Republican Institute, not the Democrats.

And my concern is, if this were just a partisan issue, there'd be no problem shutting USAID down, because right now there's going to be a legal fight over whether you can shut USAID down by executive order. This is one of the one of the main contentions right now that Democrats are vowing to fight. But if you couldn't do it through an executive order, you could do it through an act of Congress. The problem is, it's going to be much harder to do it through an act of Congress, because Republicans there, internationalist Republicans, who do foreign policy for personal profit, can form a majority coalition block with Democrats. That is, they can defect over to the Democrats and shoot down an attempt to legislate USAID out of existence. And the problem, again, is because they, either directly or indirectly, or their sponsors or donors, are on the take.

David Harris 4:50

Wow, wow, wow, wow. Yeah, we have hit the mother load here. I really hope that it's something that President Trump can just issue an EO and say it's done. I hope. Also that as they begin to uncover the details of all of these schemes that go back 20 years, as you say, I hope that the individuals involved get exposed, and literally, the America, America gets to see exactly who's been on the take for for doing what. And maybe that'll push, maybe that'll push the ability for President Trump to sign executive order and shut it down. What are your thoughts?

Mike Benz 5:25

Well in terms of what the amount is, totally eye-popping and overwhelming. The analogy that I've been giving for the past two years is that many people think they live in the world they think they live in, but in some respects, it's a carefully constructed Truman Show made up of movie characters around them, produced by USAID. And what I mean by that is USAID has infected the institutional architecture of every aspect of American society and and world society. They have infected the media by USAID sponsored media. They have infected social media by galvanizing advertiser boycotts and pressure to change social media algorithms. They've corrupted the prosecutors by USAID's work with prosecutors, Prosecutor groups and media in media groups to create predicates for prosecutors to take action. They've corrupted the unions. They've corrupted the public health institutions. Virtually every layer from academia to civil society to the private sector to the media to the government, is flowing through with unaccountable USAID bribe money to advance what's said to be US foreign policy interests. But because Donald Trump ran on a foreign policy vision dramatically different from the legacy establishment, they used US aid as the tip of the spear to kill the domestic drivers of foreign policy, aka, take out the guy who's running for president and his movement, and you won't have to worry about anyone challenging our foreign policy vision.

David Harris 6:56

... Has every past president for the last 20 years known how known about this corruption with USAID and just chose not to do anything about it?

Mike Benz 7:11

Well, most of them are on the take. Joe Biden was the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which directly oversees USAID. USAID was funding Burisma. USAID gave money to Burisma and had a formal partnership agreement with Burisma. Barack Obama's mother worked for USAID. The Bush family runs right through it, Bucha. Bucha, you know, Vice President Dick Cheney, Liz Cheney, worked for USAID. They're all in on it. And this is the reason that the Trump revolution was so revolutionary is because it defeated both sides of the USAID snake. And now we're going to see just exactly how the snake bites back when it's cornered.

David Harris 7:55

I wonder if all of the law fare and the everything that they threw at President Trump in his first term, the Russiagate, the collusion, all the stuff. I wonder if that was just to try to keep him on his on his heels enough to not look at USAID. But wait,

Mike Benz 8:09

But that was a USAID opp. . . . USAID funded a group called the OCC RP. Everyone can look this up. They paid $20 million to a group of hit piece journalists who turned around and dug up dirt on Rudy Giuliani and then use that as the basis to impeach the sitting President Donald Trump in 2019. That was USA

On FB, many people scoff at Mike Benz and Elon Musk. I forgive many of them because they are Writing Under the Influence of a complex system of government propaganda, as you've stated. They are afraid to step out of their silos to challenge themselves with information the runs counter to their comfy familiar narratives. All of us, including the still-un-red-pilled among us, are victims of a years long psychological/intellectual rape perpetrated by our own government.

Continue ReadingToday’s Report by Mike Benz: What Has Been Going on at USAID?