The appropriations committee of the GOP-controlled Florida Senate voted Friday to approve House Bill 1 (pdf), which was first proposed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis last September in the wake of Black Lives Matter and other racial justice protests that followed the police killing of unarmed Black people...
H.B. 1 would send people to prison for up to 15 years for pulling down a Confederate flag or other shrines to white supremacy. It would subject any person present at any gathering that became violent through no fault of their own to felony charges, potentially leading up to five years in prison and the loss of their voting rights, even if the individual did not engage in any violent and disorderly conduct, among other provisions. It would also protect violent counter-protesters from civil liability for injuring or killing a protester with their vehicle."
-->This legal assault on freedom of speech did not interest the NYT, which represents business interests and caters to a well healed and white readership. Let's see if the newspaper eventually covers this story.
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The Intercept:
"A billionaire funded website with ties to the far right is trying to 'cancel' university professors. Campus Reform and its publisher, the Leadership Institute, are siccing armies of trolls on professors across the country. ...
Campus Reform is published by the Leadership Institute, a nonprofit that has trained conservative activists for four decades through the generous funding of billionaire donors like the Koch family. The institute reported more than $16 million in revenue in 2018 alone. Over the last several years, Campus Reform has targeted hundreds of college professors ... leading to online harassment campaigns, doxxing, threats of violence, and calls on universities to fire their faculty.
Professors featured in Campus Reform stories have felt isolated and confused as they came under attack, often over public statements they made but sometimes over things they said in class or even academic research they published. Campus Reform stories have regularly been picked up by a host of established conservative outlets, from Breitbart to Fox News, amplifying outrage and unleashing abuse in a manner that observers of the site note mirrors how far-right extremists attack their targets online."
-->More attacks on freedom of expression. This time an orchestrated attack on the nation's professors and teachers. Where is our "newspaper of record" in reporting this assault? Like the previous story, the NYT doesn't give much coverage to the rights of protesters or leftist intellectuals.
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Veterans For Peace:
"Veterans For Peace is outraged that President Biden’s budget released this week INCREASES Pentagon spending. This is unacceptable. It is far past time for the U.S. budget to reduce a over-inflated Pentagon spending. This budget does not reflect the overwhelming majority of public opinion that supports re-prioritizing military spending towards programs that benefit regular people and their families.
In the post-9/11 years alone, the United States has spent $6.4 trillion dollars on war fighting and the maintenance of a needless and ill-advised overseas presence. Considering that the Pentagon has returned $80 billion that it could not spend in recent years and could not pass its first two financial audits, a reduction seems like a reasonable proposition, to say the least.
As military veterans from WWII to the current era of conflicts, who have trained for, and in many cases, fought in U.S. wars, we know that endless wars, failed weapons and the Pentagon’s corporate handouts do nothing to make us safe."
https://veteransforpeace.salsalabs.org/bidenbudgetalert?wvpId=c69738ed-5bd7-47e8-89cc-cedd68b3b0b3
-->Yes, the NYT did print an opinion piece April 7 entitled: "Let’s Cut Our Ridiculous Defense Budge." But we need reporting that demonstrates the extent of US militarism in the world, and the terrible costs of the US Empire.
