Staff Reports
The Biden administration’s spending spree on “misinformation” is a jaw-dropper, reaching a staggering $267 million since he took office in 2021. A report from OpenTheBooks, the spending watchdog with an eye for government waste, has unveiled the ugly truth: this is a 44-fold increase over the measly $7 million total doled out during Trump’s presidency for similar efforts. It’s as if Biden took the idea of tackling misinformation and decided to empty the federal piggy bank to do so.
Most of the cash has been funneled toward understanding how Americans reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic. Apparently, one university hit the jackpot and received nearly $250,000 to create misinformation “escape rooms” in libraries, which sounds more like a bad idea concocted during a long committee meeting than a legitimate effort to clarify the reality surrounding vaccines and health information. The irony here is that instead of equipping citizens to think critically, the administration seems to be teaching them how to avoid “misinformation” in ways that most middle school students would probably find ridiculous.
The Biden Administration spent $267 million to go after “misinformation”
Your tax dollars are being spent on research being done with the goal of censoring you. pic.twitter.com/ncyLBz3yGJ
— America (@america) November 24, 2024
The folks at OpenTheBooks aren’t shy about calling this spending a fool’s errand. They argue that while learning to discern truth from lies is indeed a valuable skill, the federal government is hardly the right organization to teach it. When the state becomes the arbiter of truth, it lays the groundwork for censorship. It’s akin to letting a fish decide which restaurant serves the best sushi.
Digging deeper into the numbers reveals that between 2017 and now, the total spends on misinformation hit $274 million, with ballooning costs mostly arriving in 2021 as Biden took the reins. The Health and Human Services Department did its part by promoting vaccines through social media surveillance while also authorizing grants to monitor any dissenting medical opinions. Talk about the government wanting to be your health coach and social media referee at the same time.
Amidst this big budget allocation for so-called misinformation policing, the National Science Foundation has also joined the fray by funding research on how political polarization leads to susceptibility to misinformation. Naturally, this produced studies that found plenty of ways to slap Trump down while demanding that government experts take center stage during health crises. Yet, with initial claims about social distancing and the virus’s risk factors proving to be flat-out wrong, the credibility of such studies could be viewed as dicey at best.
While the government toils away trying to snuff out “misinformation,” various agencies have seen their attempts blow up in their faces, including the infamous Disinformation Governance Board that was put out of its misery just moments after it was announced. There are still lingering concerns that government pressures on social media companies contributed to censorship, leading many Americans to question if the only real misinformation taking place is how the government interprets the First Amendment. Ultimately, the takeaway remains: more transparency, not control, is the cure for misinformation.
