In response of Elon Musk buying Twitter with a pledge to restore free speech values to the company, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass) joined many on the left in declaring that our very democracy is now in danger. However, last night Warren went further with MSNBC’s host Ari Melber to pledge to hit Musk and others with a wealth tax and “new rules” limiting what he can do with his new company.
The choice of interviewers was notable since Melber has been under fire for warning that Twitter could be used to “secretly ban” or “turn down the reach” of a political party or candidate. That is apparently worse than Twitter openly banning candidates and suspending accounts of conservatives for years. Melber emphasized “this thing matters a ton.” That is a ton more than it mattered for the last six years.
On MSNBC’s “The Beat,” Warren declared
“I see that we need to make two big changes. The first one is we need a wealth tax in America. Let’s talk about how Elon’s purchase here was subsidized by tens of millions of people who have paid their taxes every year. The second part is we need rules of the road for big tech. But ultimately, what all of this boils down to is power. Who’s going to have the power in our country? Are we going to make these decisions as a democracy, or is this going to be Elon Musk all by himself off in a room, a bazillionaire who just plays by his own set of rules, and that’s really what’s at stake here.”
“We need rules of the road, and look. There are going to be rules. Like I said, the only question is will Elon Musk decide all of the rules by himself in a darkroom, or is it going to be the case that we’re going to decide this as a country? We’re going to make rules in a democracy.”
The most ironic moment came with Warren’s explanation that “Rules of the road could help facilitate that kind of competition and frankly, break the stranglehold of someone like Elon Musk coming in and owning the whole thing.”
As with Melber, the lack of self-awareness is breathtaking. Until this purchase, social media has been a uniform front for censorship in line with the demands of politicians like Warren.
Senators like Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) warned social media companies that they would not tolerate any “backsliding or retrenching” by “failing to take action against dangerous disinformation,” and demanded “robust content modification” to block disfavored views on subjects ranging from climate control to elections to the pandemic.
Sen. Warren (D-Mass.) has called for these companies to protect citizens from poor reading choices by tweaking algorithms to steer them away from disfavored views. It is the free-speech version of the rejected “Big Gulp” laws. Warren wants companies to amplify “true” books on issues like climate change and direct searches away from “misleading” books.
Once again, Warren continues to dismiss constitutional protections and values in the name of democracy.
I have previously written how a wealth tax would gut constitutional language limiting the tax authority of Congress. The Constitution originally imposed a narrow limit on Congress’ taxing authority. Article I, Sections 8 and 9, barred any direct tax unless it’s “apportioned among the several states” in proportion to population. In other words, it must be spread evenly among every person in every state.
In 1895, Congress sought to impose an income tax, but was stopped by the Supreme Court in Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust (1895). The court barred any such tax “upon property holders in respect of their estates, whether real or personal, or of the income yielded by such estates, and the payment of which cannot be avoided.”
That case led to the ratification of the 16th Amendment, which allows Congress to levy “taxes on incomes” without apportionment. Yet it expressly states that “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”
President Joe Biden has moved in that same direction while denying that he was seeking a wealth tax. However, after the President rolled out the new tax, his economic adviser Jared Bernstein went on Fox News and had a moment of uncontrollable honesty. He blurted out to Bret Baier that “it is very much a tax on wealth.”
As for her threat of “new rules” for social media to blunt Musk’s efforts, it is a telling threat. Her threat would suggest direct control over content and would potentially cross the line for First Amendment protections.
However, the idea of losing control over what people say or read is proving too much for many. That was evident in the tearful remarks of Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s head of legal, policy and trust, to her staff this week. Gadde, like Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, is highly controversial in the free speech community for her record of censorship, including her role in banning Donald Trump as well as the New York Post story on the Hunter Biden laptop.
As I wrote recently, Democrats are facing the prospect that the use of corporations as surrogates for censorship may be undermined by Musk’s free speech pledge. Now, figures like Hillary Clinton are turning to good old-fashioned censorship through European countries. Last week, Clinton called on the European Union to pass the Digital Services Act (DSA), a massive censorship measure that has received preliminary approval. Coming after Musk’s bid for Twitter, Clinton and others now want to use European countries to offer the same circumvention of the First Amendment.
It is important to remember that this panic among politicians and pundits is due to a threat that free speech may break out on a single social media platform. It is enough for politicians like Clinton to seek to enlist European regulators and for Warren to threaten direct regulations on content. The problem is that, despite an entire commercial campaign by Facebook to convince customers to embrace censorship, many in the public are not buying the pitch of Democrats that they must be protected from errant or upsetting or dangerous viewpoints.
When Warren says “we’re going to make rules in a democracy,” most of us are likely to cling to the old rules, including our faith in free speech.
Dissolve the Ministry of Truth Big Brother Biden is proposing. As an alternative, tarring and feathering its members seems reasonable.
I doubt someone of Musk’s wealth and stature will care. These people are ridiculous, and she often leads the charge. Guess they forgot that he is top in EV, and just weeks ago these same idiots were saying,’Buy an EV.’. Stop voting for them. I am literally in awe of how sh** pants scared these people are by literally the smallest social network allowing free speech. We have entered Nazi times. Let’s not give them power this go around, ok?
She is a clown, and so is her ‘liberal’ cohort. How bloody asleep does one have to be to continue voting for this? This is not the party of JFK. If you still believe it is, you have not paid attention for a very, very long time. May the rule of law prevail, nothing illegal has happened here and they know it, so they defame, exaggerate, and obfuscate. Absolutely pathetic. I don’t want a one party system, I just want the Dems to stop acting like spoiled, fragile children. Younger conservatives, libertarians, and independents sound more like JFK democrats than any of these desperate and power hungry fools could ever hope to. May the DNC die an actually very timely death – those of us that believe in humans being able to actually thrive are no longer on board with them and stopped listening to them long ago.
The first employee to be fired by Musk is Ms. Gadde. It’s already been shown by recent Polls that had Twitter allowed the NY Post ‘laptop’ revelations to remain available for viewing, the Biden victory very possibly would have been a defeat. One could say that Ms. Gadde perpetrated the ‘election fraud’ that is still on the minds of 10’s of millions of legal american voters. Maybe the Liz Warren staff will offer Ms. Gadde a job as censor-in-chief. At least Ms. Gadde is a real Indian.
How is this person even allowed to hold office after taking advantage of her lies about being a Native American? Once again I say watch the midterms they are not going to let Americans enjoy a fair election.
Time for Voter ID and in person elections….TOO MUCH cheating!
I only want Real People who ACTUAL can show up to Vote…like virtually EVERY COUNTRY!
No more Vote Canvassing paid for by Billionaires
Fire can we jail Every Democrat involved in the Russian Hoax and spying on Trump!
And I mean Obama, Hillary, Biden, DNC leaders, Schiff, Nadler, Pelosi, Comey, Clapper, Brennan, Media People, etc…the REAL Insurrection…and Use Firing Squads!
That was the Biggest political crime in US History!
If you don’t Vote Republican, You Hate America
*Anything* non-dem will do. They know it. They got in bed with the devil and are now desperately trying to find their way out in an election year. Their time is up and they can’t fathom the consequences, such is the hubris. They are gobsmacked that all of their money and connections were ultimately not the deciding factors, just like the aristocracy of long ago (incidentally, heads literally rolled back then).
I understand your sentiment, but beware that there are also many ineffective or downright nasty Republicans in the world, too — choose your candidate not by the label, but by the content!
Liz speak with forked tongue like devil. Need more firewater with brave in wigwam. Okay one more time:
At what point does this Democratic hypocracy from the likes of Warren cross the line to sedition?
Sedition? She is yet another direct and mortal enemy of America.
Senator Warren is wrong on several points.
1:The USA was never designed or intended to be a “democracy.” Instead, the USA was founded as a “Constitutional Representative Republic” and the U.S. Constitution guarantees every State and every Citizen a “Republican form of Government.
2: We need every idea, every counter argument, every opinion, and every voice in order to come to a sensible and reasonable understanding of a problem, challenge or event. We need critical thinking. You cannot come to intellectual understanding when only one side dominates the discussion.
Musk said – “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy and Twitter is the digital town square where matter vital to the future of humanity are debated. ”
3: Income Taxpayers who earn $83,682 or more per year, contributes 86.1% of the total income tax revenue collected by the federal government.
The federal government grossly mismanages tax revenue.
In opposition to a wealth tax, we must force the federal government to abide by the Constitution.
“. . . the tearful remarks of Vijaya Gadde . . .”
She’s the whiny type who needed a “safe space” in college, and was coddled as a child.
Some one on the previous post noted, the left is reacting in fear.
The left had full control of the narrative. Musk is threatening to throw sand in the gears of the machine controlled by leftists.
Warren demands the violation of 1st amendment protections.
Warren demands the violation of 16th amendment protections
I would love for a talking head to have Warren explain how she so easily ignores protections, citizens are afforded from a tyrannical federal government.
Always start with the truth. The constitution was written to severely limit the power of the federal government, to ONLY enumerated powers. ALL other powers rest with the States, or the People.
“….protections….citizens are afforded from a tyrannical federal government.” She doesn’t believe that citizens should have protections. And she doesn’t believe that HER federal government could ever be tyrannical. Of course, she believes in the Easter Bunny too……
EXCELLENT post, Professor Turley, and thank you! I
EXCELLENT post, Professor Turley, and thank you! With the thrust of mainstream media propaganda, The good professor’s observations help keep us anchored in reality and critical assessment of the selective-fact reporting we are generally fed. As a result, I have noticed an increase in attacks on the professor from certain commenters herein, which only reveals their inability to address and/or counter the actual facts presented in the professor’s post.
Does anyone actually listen to Elizabeth Warren? She believes in we, the taxpayers, paying for tuition costs borrowed by others, but nixes free words. What a putz!
Sen. Warren continues to move further and further into darkness even as she becomes even more shrill. Through my life, I have generally regarded women as the smarter sex, but as always in regards to observations such as this, there are exceptions. The incredible lack of self awareness and periodic re-appraisal of her outbursts and thought process, puts Sen Warren in the exception box of my observations.
she made millions being a cheater…..why would that change?
Senator Elizabeth Warren is welcome to her opinion but the fact is that her opinion has showed us over and over again that she’s a “progressive” fool, aka an Orwellian totalitarian, and a bithering idiot, I don’t put any stock in anything that fool says. The people that continue to vote Warren into office are damn fools.
My hope is that November 8, 2022 will be the beginning of the political end for these foolish totalitarian politicians dominating the political scene across the USA.
Strip the foolish totalitarian imbeciles, like Warren, of their political power and flush their political clout down the toilet.
Oops, bad editing can create some rather bad grammar and spelling when you forget to proof read before hitting the “SUBMIT” button. Arrrgh!
Steve, you cannot believe in Federalism and say the voters in Massachusetts must strip Warren of her political power. I am a Massachusetts resident (but not a voter because there is no one here worth voting for) but you have to respect that Warren totally represents the vast majority of the residents of the state.
This is a state where 7 of the last 10 leaders of our Legislature were found guilty of felonies (the other three were heavily investigated). This is a state that elected and re-elected and re-elected to Congress a murderer, a pedophile, and a guy that ran a prostitution ring out of his house in DC. This is the state that invented gerrymandered and still has the two most gerrymandered districts in the country. The litany is long but you get the point: Warren is considered our most representative individual
I totally feel your pain as a resident of Northern New York, (that’s not upstate new York mind you, but I am closer to Toronto than I am to the NYC/Albany corridor) and we are held captive by the mere fact that 7+million NYC liberals control the entire state – most of which are conservatives. Try as we can the parasites of NYC and those growing fat on that system, cannot be outvoted.
Alma, I have a home in Manhattan, but my residence is elsewhere. You are miles away from the despotism I live in the middle of. Not everyone is progressive, but they outnumber the ones that are. The left in NYC is like the pod people without minds.
DeBlasio destroyed NYC. One has to be afraid of walking in midtown. One would think the pod people saw the light, but the new mayor isn’t that much better.
Friends who live on the west side in the 70s (streets) and have young children have been faced with drug addicts and sexual perverts placed in the local hotels.
NYC is no longer a decent city.
My other half had been a NYC resident most of his life and had a condo in Brooklyn until a year ago when he agreed that we should flee and we did, back up to my family in Northern NY. Bought a home up here and are glad we did when we hear of all the crime in Brooklyn. he doubts if anything can save that city short of a catastrophic demographic shift.
Alma, I never was out of NYC, though my official residence has been elsewhere almost my entire adult life. Until the destruction by DeBlasio, I never thought of selling my home, figuring my kids could make that decision later. Keeping that home becomes less and less likely every month.
Ever since the creation of “The Great Society” urban centers have been sinkholes of parasites and the unionized bureaucrats who feed on them through our tax dollars.
Yes, Alma, and if you are old enough, you might remember some of the things Harlem had to offer. In the 50s, the black community was advancing rapidly. That rapid advancement tapered off and declined with “The Great Society .”Race became a tool to make some very rich while they kept a thriving community down.
My other half is a jazz bassist in his personal time and he has great respect for those musicians of that era, (in fact I’m listening to John Coltraine’s “Equinox” right now), and we know what potential was squandered in the creation of this permanent underclass of parasites living off the government and the bureaucratic leeches sucking all they can from the government teat.
“My other half is a jazz bassist”
What a lucky woman you are, live music.
We paid a high price for slavery. How can we repay all of those destroyed by the Great Society in the future? According to Maimonides, the highest level of giving is to give so that the person is never in need. Give a job. The best we can do is provide a good education for the young, but the left wants to indoctrinate rather than teach.
Thank you, yes I am so lucky, Good jazz every evening. But the black population, not so much. The majority of them haven’t realized that they are now slaves to the extreme left; all they need do, instead of pick cotton, is to turn out to vote in exchange for the exact same thing their slave owners gave them; free food, healthcare and shelter. The only difference now seems to be an increase in drug use and crime – oh, and the extra children, instead of being sold off for profit, are now euthanized in the womb for the profit of the abortionist industry.
Alma, you are very right. It took a Civil War to end slavery, but the left didn’t want to give up enslaving those same people and more.
You continue, and no comment is needed. “their slave owners gave them; free food, healthcare and shelter. The only difference now seems to be an increase in drug use and crime – oh, and the extra children, instead of being sold off for profit, are now euthanized in the womb for the profit of the abortionist industry.
Thank you for your polite and accurate discussion.
You have my sympathy. I know an elderly Chinese lady living in Queens who can no longer leave her home because of the chance that she may be attacked and beaten for no other reason than she looks Chinese, is an aged woman, and thus an easy target. She is one of the kindest, most mild persons I have ever met. NYC sounds like a kind of hell on Earth.
I, too, live closer to Toronto than Albany or points south. One party rule in NYS is painful. At least NYS’ highest court just struck down the gerrymandered maps constructed by that one party and appointed a Special Master to redraw them.
That was a good surprise, but let’s see who this “impartial” person is who will oversee the redrawing.
A situation no different than that in Illinois, Wisconsin, Delaware, Michigan etc., etc. where there is one Democrat controlled big city that outvotes the rest of the state. And because they control the city/County so completely, they can count those votes over and over and over and over again until they have enough. And they do.
Liz Warren speaks out.
Lizbeth arenBay lives on a barge.
“…the lack of self-awareness is breathtaking.”
We can say that about many lefties.
Just look at our lefty posters and their (many, many) posts on the blog.
They are totally ignorant of their ignorance and the ironic hypocrisy they spew, while tragically funny in one sense, is going to become lethal to our nation if not stopped shortly.
There is NO ONE more Greedy, Hate Filled, Lying, Cheating, Hypocrite than a Democrat
Every Day just Proves it more!
If you don’t vote Republican, You Hate America
they are self-aware. They are Lying HYPOCRITES!
Scratch a progressive and reveal a tyrant. Every time!