Business
Judge allows Elon Musk’s ‘thermonuclear’ lawsuit against Media Matters to proceed
From LifeSiteNews
Elon Musk accuses Media Matters of manufacturing images to falsely accuse his social media platform X of putting advertisers next to Nazi content.
A federal judge has ruled that anti-woke, pro-free-speech tech mogul Elon Musk’s lawsuit against far-left Media Matters for America (MMFA) can proceed, keeping alive a “thermonuclear” challenge to the notorious organization’s practices that could set a major precedent.
Last November, Musk, the Tesla owner whose purchase of Twitter and transformation of it into X has upended left-wing activists’ monopoly on social media speech, filed a lawsuit against MMFA over an article it published accusing accusing Musk of having descended “into white nationalist and antisemitic conspiracy theories,” and “placing ads for major brands like Apple, Bravo (NBCUniversal), IBM, Oracle, and Xfinity (Comcast) next to content that touts Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party.”
Musk responded that the article’s images were “manufactured” to create a false impression and “destroy” X. He vowed to launch a “thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and ALL those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company,” promising to hold accountable the group’s’ “board, their donors, their network of dark money, all of them.”
On August 29, Bush-appointed U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas Judge Reed O’Connor rejected MMFA’s bid to have the suit dismissed.
“Plaintiff has provided sufficient allegations to survive dismissal,” he wrote. “Plaintiff has factually alleged: the existence of contracts subject to interference; intentional acts of interference; and proximate causation […] Plaintiff plausibly alleges that Defendants proximately caused their harm. Proximate cause requires proof of both cause-in-fact and foreseeability. Defendants present a compelling alternative version of events to Plaintiff’s. However, the Court will not ‘choose among competing inferences’ at this stage […] Accordingly, Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint alleges sufficient facts to state a claim of tortious interference with contract.”
Commenting on the ruling, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley wrote that “Musk’s lawsuit may be the most defining for our age of advocacy journalism” because it “directly challenges the ability of media outlets to create false narratives to advance a political agenda.”
“The complaint accuses Media Matters of running its manipulation to produce extremely unlikely pairings, such that one toxic match appeared for ‘only one viewer (out of more than 500 million) on all of X: Media Matters,’” Turley explained. “In other words, the organization wanted to write a hit piece connecting X to pro-Nazi material and proceeded to artificially create pairings between that material and corporate advertisements. It then ran the story as news.”
“Indeed, two defendant employees of Media Matters did not deny that they were aware of the alleged manipulation and that they were seeking to poison the well for advertisers in order to drain advertising revenues for X,” he added.
Media Matters describes its mission as “comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media,” but conservatives say its true mission is to demonize conservative voices and promote leftist narratives and misinformation. Leftist billionaire George Soros has supported the organization with millions in donations since its birth in 2004, though he did not go public with his support until 2010.
Media Matters founder David Brock has described the organization’s mission as “guerrilla warfare and sabotage” against Fox News but has long since branched out to other major outlets deemed out of step with the Left. It has also advocated censoring conservatives on social networks such as Facebook, to which Musk’s purchase and transformation of Twitter stands in opposition.
In 2021, Media Matters was one of multiple left-wing groups that took credit for pressuring Facebook to ban LifeSiteNews, based on false claims of “COVID-19 and vaccine disinformation.”
Business
PBO report shows cost of bureaucracy up 73 per cent under Trudeau
From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is calling on the federal government to rein in the bureaucracy following today’s Parliamentary Budget Officer report showing the bureaucracy costs taxpayers $69.5 billion.
“The cost of the federal bureaucracy increased by 73 per cent since 2016, but it’s a good bet most Canadians aren’t seeing anywhere close to 73 per cent better services from the government,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “Taxpayers are getting soaked because the size and cost of the federal bureaucracy is out of control.”
Today’s PBO report estimates the federal bureaucracy cost taxpayers $69.5 billion in 2023-24. In 2016-17, the cost of the bureaucracy was $40.2 billion. That’s an increase of 72.9 per cent.
The most recent data shows the cost continues to rise quickly.
“Spending on personnel in the first five months of 2024-25 is up 8.0 per cent over the same period last year,” according to the PBO.
“I have noticed a marked increase in the number of public servants since 2016 and a proportional increase in spending,” said Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux. “But we haven’t seen similar improvements when it comes to service.”
The Trudeau government added 108,793 bureaucrats since 2016 – a 42 per cent increase. Canada’s population grew by 14 per cent during the same period. Had the bureaucracy only increased with population growth, there would be 72,491 fewer federal employees today.
The government awarded more than one million pay raises to bureaucrats in the last four years, according to access-to-information records obtained by the CTF. The government also rubberstamped $406 million in bonuses last year.
“The government added tens of thousands of extra bureaucrats, rubberstamped hundreds of millions in bonuses and awarded more than one million pay raises and all taxpayers seem to get out of it is higher taxes and more debt,” Terrazzano said. “For the government to balance the budget and provide tax relief, it will need to cut the size and cost of Ottawa’s bloated bureaucracy.”
ESG
Can’t afford Rent? Groceries for your kids? Trudeau says suck it up and pay the tax!
Watch Canada’s Prime Minister tell an anti-poverty group, your ability to buy “groceries for my kids” is less important than sacrificing to pay his carbon tax.
In case you still thought there might be even the tiniest chance Justin Trudeau might come around.. well this settles it. He is as they say, ‘beyond the pale’.
Sure we’ve pieced this together over the last number of years, but it’s still SHOCKING to see him say it directly, proclaim it proudly. This week Trudeau received applause from an audience of the intellectually suffering at something called the “Global Citizen Now” panel discussion on the sidelines of the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Rio.
Much appreciation for the first short video below to Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre who shared his ferocious reaction to Trudeau’s anti-human comments, challenging the current PM to call an immediate election.
Or course there will be no quick election call. To Justin, it’s more important to cling to the undercarriage of a taxpayer funded jet so he can fly the globe stunning audiences unfortunately already stunned by their utter terror of losing the planet.
In their horror at their inability to turn the switch off and let us all freeze/starve to death this winter, they applaud lovingly for their intellectual leader/sock model as he describes how hard it is to convince angry, hungry people they really need to suck it up.
If only he read a history book.. any history book.. apologies, any book at all. Truly even spending some time with the literary version of an Al Gore video rant would at lest keep JT occupied so he couldn’t speak for a few moments. I’m pretty sure every time he opens his mouth, the temperature in Canada rises as millions of frustrated hotheads (hello there) explode, spewing steam high up into the upper atmosphere where water particles do much more damage to our planet than the final exhaling of a non grocery-eating-planet-loving-Canadian.
Watch Pierre Poilievre’s video and assuage the ensuing headache by mapping out your route to a polling booth. If this doesn’t sell a couple of those ‘Axe the Tax’ shirts for the Poilievre team, well.. enjoy your stroll to the foodbank.
Here’s a link to his entire discussion. If you have a strong stomach and 20 minutes of your life to donate to a higher cause… No silly, not the intended cause of the anti-poverty group… But to the intellectual cause of understanding just how twisted the logic has become for those who fly around the world to wine and dine, only to break long enough to tell us they think it’s perfectly fine if we can’t buy groceries for our kids.
By the way, please save a bit of your shock and disappointment for the hapless host of the ‘anti-poverty’ Global Citizen. This was apparently on the sidelines of a G20 Summit. I would expect this drivel to be called out at a respectable middle school debate. Apparently the ‘anti-poverty’ Global Citizen people aren’t overly concerned with poverty. Do we need to say that not being able to afford groceries is in fact THE definition of poverty? Or course not. It would be much easier for them to change their name to Former Global Citizens.
You were warned.
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