California used to be trumpeted as the cutting edge of American culture.
It still is, except the culture is now all about censoring free speech.
California Senator Richard Pan, who was behind the infamous 2015 law mandating vaccinations for schoolchildren (SB277), has stepped up to the plate and introduced another bill.
This one would clamp down on criticism of ANY Official Story.
The bill is titled “SB1424 Internet: social media: false information: strategic plan.”
It targets social media based in California. But as you read the bill, you see it appears to define social media as any Internet blog, website, or communication.
SB1424 is brief. Read it:
This bill would require any person who operates a social media, as defined, Internet Web site with a physical presence in California to develop a strategic plan to verify news stories shared on its Web site. The bill would require the plan to include, among other things, a plan to mitigate the spread of false information through news stories, the utilization of fact-checkers to verify news stories, providing outreach to social media users, and placing a warning on a news story containing false information.
(a) Any person who operates a social media Internet Web site with physical presence in California shall develop a strategic plan to verify news stories shared on its Internet Web site.
(b) The strategic plan shall include, but is not limited to, all of the following:
(1) A plan to mitigate the spread of false information through news stories.
(2) The utilization of fact-checkers to verify news stories.
(3) Providing outreach to social media users regarding news stories containing false information.
(4) Placing a warning on a news story containing false information.
(c) As used in this section, “social media” means an electronic service or account, or electronic content, including, but not limited to, videos, still photographs, blogs, video blogs, podcasts, instant and text messages, email, online services or accounts, or Internet Web site profiles or locations.
Getting the picture?
It’s a free speech killer.
If it passes, agencies of the California government will develop numerous regulations for enforcement, including penalties for “speech criminals.”
Saying this bill violates the 1st Amendment of the Constitution is a vast understatement. The last time I looked, the Founders mentioned nothing about fact checkers or warnings attached to speech.
“Open borders and a flood of immigration into California are destructive to—wait. My statement has been precluded by warnings and fact-checker overrides…”
Or: “VACCINES ARE DANGEROUS. Ahem, I am making a debatable assertion and I must warn you that official experts strenuously disagree with me, and furthermore, the California Fact Checkers United, a division of Merck-Snopes Thought Police, has determined that my assertion is groundless and harmful to children’s health…”
There needs to be a relentless tsunami of protest in California over this Orwellian bill. I know of a number of Internet news operations in the state. They must jump in and lead the way.
In case you believe there are too many websites and blogs based in California to enforce a new draconian law, let me explain how the game works. Behind closed doors, the state government would decide to focus on a few big issues. For example, gun control, vaccines, and immigration. Enforcement agencies would go after the biggest Internet operations expressing politically unacceptable points of view on those subjects. At first. A spread of smaller operations would feel the heat later.
So-called fact checkers would come from government supported groups who agree with Official Positions. In other words, they wouldn’t be fact checkers at all. They would be prime news fakers.
When it comes to the issue of vaccines, for example, they would cite the notoriously biased “experts” at the Centers for Disease Control, never mentioning that the CDC buys and sells $4 billion of vaccines a year.
If, 10 or 15 years ago, someone told you a bill like SB1424 was going to come before a state legislature for a vote, you would have thought you were listening to a Hollywood pitch for a sci-fi movie script.
But now it’s real. It’s here. Believe it.
CRUSH IT.
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.
Image credit: Banksy
DEATH TO THE TRAITOR PAN !!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdjyCCJWqdY&t=147s
California, you can leave the UNION, now—PLESE DO let the door slam on your backside as you go !!!
Sounds like Jerry Brown and Pan want California on the “cutting edge” of a Communist nation trial. Screw that and screw them!
Don’t see anything in there about the media, govt, politicians,police having to prove their “facts”.
It is not the job or purview of governments of any stripe to tell people who to listen to, how to listen, what to listen to and where to do so. That is the responsibility and right of the individual.It is also the individual’s responsibility to ascertain the reliability of the message they hear, not the government’s job.
What country are you living in? I have been here since 1933; and the near exact opposite has been the case here at least that long. Let’s start with the Ponzi scheme that we call Social Security (1935). Compulsory schooling then (for me 1938), and if anyone still believes that those places have anything to do with education, they have obviously been there and have none. How about compelling us to have licenses to perform our jobs, even though those jobs were done successfully for centuries without government permission and many are quite menial occupations. Then there is the so-called national debt. The debt is created by others, in most cases without our consent for purposes for which we derive no benefit, and most often are actually directly harmed by having that dept hypothecated onto us and descendants. Then there are driver’s licenses, twice ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court for private passenger vehicles not engaged in commerce, but since we’re not constitutional that doesn’t matter anyway. I could go on for days, gun laws, possession laws, crimes that have no victim, arbitrary age requirements, political correctness enacted into laws. When one is not “livin’ in the Matrix” the picture becomes clear, the Chinese have more liberty than we do; they know that their government is their boss.
I don’t live in the US. I left there 50 years ago and haven’t missed it for a second!
California, and any of the other forty-nine corporate entities we call states, can pass any law and do any thing that they choose to do with complete impunity. Most of you have forgotten about one of the very few times that George W. Bush got things that he was supposed to keep still about, but didn’t, right. His puppet masters of the Deep State mad sure that he did not repeat it, too, if you recall. He just blurted out, “The constitution is just a goddamn piece of paper!”. It is actually parchment, but that’s not what is relevant. What IS relevant is that the reason the way our de facto government conducts itself does not seem to have any connection to what is written in the constitution is that is doesn’t have to. This country has not been a constitutional republic for 157 years. (Since March 27, 1861) The law here is now whatever the oligarchs want it to be, and say it is at any given time. We have no rights; only those privileges our masters choose to let us indulge ourselves in, and only until they decide otherwise. And, through their compulsory schooling (think about how the meanings of the words compulsory and liberty go together) they have made most of the population so complacent, and ignorant, and functionally illiterate, that they cheerfully live in the Matrix of lies and deception. At least they do until the Police State decides it’s time to step on Them!