Trending
Government is incapable of making good choices
To the editor:
I thought I'd seen everything, until yesterday. The government has announced the formation of something called the Disinformation Governance Board, which is supposed to suppress "disinformation." Nothing more blatantly unconstitutional can be imagined, because our ultimate law says, Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech or the freedom of the press."
The person who is going to be in charge of it says that the board is only there to suppress "disinformation," not free speech. So, they are going to determine what is disinformation? It seems to me that we have a procedure for doing that already: it's called the legal system, and most of its work is based on determining what the truth is. Furthermore, the idea that Congress is considering regulation of social media, on the same misguided basis, is equally repugnant. If the idea of the Disinformation Bureau is not speedily rejected, there should be an immediate appeal to the Supreme Court to squash this nonsense.
But, let's go on: how did the government introduce this new organization? With a video showing its designated executive singing a made-up song about disinformation, as though this whole initiative was as serious as a musical comedy show. Majorkas, who will be this person's boss if, by some unimaginable error this this becomes reality, says that she is an "accomplished professional," when we all know that she is a highly partisan leftist, slated for a job that is supposed to be non-partisan. (Majorkas is the one who says the border is under control.)
Where does the government get these people, who lie and dodge the issue and pass the buck and generally pretend that they don't know what we all know about various political issues? Both parties do it, but because the Democrats are in power, we get most of this behavior from them now. All the government spokespeople you see on TV would not last a day in a private corporation.
Whatever is going on in Washington today becomes more misguided by a view that, as we might say, has passed its sale date, and that is party loyalty. Party loyalty turns Washington into a team competition in which one side must be the loser, with the good of the country a secondary outcome, if considered at all. The point being that parties no longer stand united in basic political stances. The Republicans are no longer the party of big business, and the Democrats are no longer the spokespeople of the poor.
The Democrats were so split in the last presidential election that they caused Joe Biden to be their nominee, with the results we are now experiencing. Arguments that simply pose "Democrats" vs. "Republicans" have no use these days. (Have you noticed that the TV ads for candidates running for office these days rarely indicate what their party is?) People like Joe Manchin represent the future of politics, which will be for the good of the country.
One other thing before I shut up. Obama nationalized student loan debt under the cover of his Obamacare bill, leaving all that money subject to the whims of politicians. Now we see the result of that error, in Biden's idea that he will cancel some of it, a proposal totally without reason or merit.
If Biden does it by executive action, he will just add to his list of significant misjudgments that have brought the country closer to an existential crisis.
John Brittain
Lewistown