By Matt Rooney
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We’re celebrating the Declaration of Independence today, Save Jerseyans, so I apologize in advance if you think I’m being a downer! That’s not at all my intention, but there’s some things you need to hear.
For starters: if the Constitution is the framework of our American liberties?
The Declaration is the foundation.
Among those liberties is the First Amendment which the Framers considered so supremely important that it was given the primary position in the Bill of Rights. The right to free speech, and association, without an established tyrant, government, or church calling the shots is the most American thing about being American. It’s the very essence of freedom.
Too few recall (if they ever learned it in the first place) that the Declaration of Independence is more than its first paragraph just like the Constitution is more than its first article or first amendment; it’s a litany of grievances lodged against the King of England at that time (George III) and his unmovable parliament. It wasn’t that long ago that the rights we take for granted today were being actively withheld from our countrymen by an effectively foreign power.
The Crown was picking winners and punishing losers.
242 years later? Almost to the day?
The Murphy Administration is going into the news business.
The basics: Governor Phil Murphy has signed into law what’s been dubbed the “Civic Info Bill.”
This new law allots $5 million in taxpayer dollars for grants toward create a “Civic Information Consortium” with the goal of promoting the development of new media outlets to “better meet the information needs of low-income communities and racial and ethnic communities that have been underserved by the media.”
Applicants need only apply if they are collaborating with one of five designed public universities and either a community-oriented organization (?), an existing news media outlet, or an entity in New Jersey’s technology sector. The proposal must also “offer a clear benefit to communities.”
Bureaucrats will play a decisive role in deciding who is entitled to start a news outlet with tax dollars. Your money. The new 13-person board of directors will feature two appointees from the governor, two from the legislature, five members from the cited universities (The College of New Jersey, Montclair State University, the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Rowan University, and Rutgers, all for whom the line between public and private is already blurred since their boards have public appointees and receive public funding), and four more members elected by the other nine members.
Can we expect these grant recipients to promote diversity of thought, too?
The people and institutions appointing the grant-givers aren’t famous for promoting that! So I highly doubt it. And consider the people su
pporting this legislation…
According to The Daily Caller, a group called Free Press dedicated to “diversity in media ownership” and complaining, on its website, about “[c]ompanies led by White men own nearly all of our media — which is why women and people of color are so often depicted in stereotypical terms or ignored altogether.”
Subsidized websites will be far-left and, more than likely, tow the ideological line for an all-Democrat controlled state government. Make no mistake about it, Save Jerseyans: even in “blue” New Jersey, websites like Save Jersey and our friends over at MoreMonmouthMusings are disproportionately successful relative to the ideologically leftist alternatives.
We’re good, sure, and don’t mind saying so, but we’re also already serving a constituency ignored by the media and their government (“taxpayers”). It’s the key to our success! Democrats are desperate to even the score and get us off their backs. Their answer is to set up inorganic websites which, because they’re artificial and lack ideological diversity, wouldn’t succeed WITHOUT government subsidies.
I guess their attitude is now “if you can’t beat’em, use tax dollars to out-gun them.”
Think about all of this while chowing down on your Independence Day hot dog or during the walk to the parade route.
The colonists rebelled for so much less than the taxes and other indignities we’re forced to swallow here in New Jersey on a daily basis, and with new laws like this “Civic Info Bill” coming into vogue in the halls of power, our capacity to fight back is coming under direct attack.
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