Watch Louder with Crowder every weekday at 11:00 AM Eastern, only on Rumble Premium!

For the side that claims to be all in it to defend Democracy, those people sure like to keep a lot of secrets.

California lawmakers have proposed a bill that would make it more difficult to obtain answers from government agencies and, in some cases, could land citizens in court for asking the wrong questions at the wrong time.

Per the New York Post:

News publishers and other First Amendment supporters had already opposed Assembly Bill 1821 by Assemblymember Blanca Pacheco (D), which initially just sought to extend the timeline for when government entities, such as city halls or state agencies, needed to respond to a request for public records.

But Pacheco adjusted her measure so that steep fees can be charged for the time staff spends to find publicly available records: an administrative fee of $22.35 per hour and a “professional fee” of $66.26 per hour, both subject to cost-of-living increases.

Do these people understand that they work for the people and not the other way around? They act as if they are doing some extreme favors here when it was never intended for these people to shield records from the public. If they cared about transparency, they would be trying to make it easier and more accessible for the people to obtain answers. Rather than do that, they are hoping to charge ridiculous fees so that fewer people are encouraged to get such documents. This should be a scandal considering this is the same political party pretending to fight Nazis and end Fascism. Californians have got to have some of the most corrupt lawmakers in the nation. What a disgrace.

Not only that, under the newest version of the bill, if a government believes the record requester has “malicious intent,” it can ask a court to make that determination and put the request on hold pending a court decision.

The pro-free speech nonprofit First Amendment Coalition blasted the new language and claimed obtaining government records would cost much more. Currently, agencies may generally only charge for copying costs.

According to a spokesperson for Pacheco, all of this is intended to shield local governments from absurd abuses of public records requests. And if you believe that nonsense, you must be objectively stupid.

But the “malicious intent” provision that allows the government to take someone to court is particularly dangerous, claimed David Snyder, the coalition’s executive director.

“It would be easily weaponized by agencies seeking to thwart transparency and accountability, as has already happened elsewhere in the country,” he said. “For decades, California law has been clear that state and local agencies cannot sue records requesters.”

What is so infuriating about this bill is that these same people call the other side corrupt, when they are making it easier to hide corruption. If I did not know any better, I might just say the authors of this bill may or may not have something to hide. I do know better, however, so I will not be saying that. Nonetheless, if you are surprised by any of this, you are part of the problem.

- YouTube www.youtube.com