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An Air Force is not sufficiently like either the army or navy to count, so it isn't authorized. Yes, the government could lie and say that it is.
That's pretty easy to just state ipse dixit. But there's something missing that I would call "reasoning". So far, when we've tested your reasoning, it has led to many more questions that you've consistently refused to answer.
That's not how Constitutional grants of authority work. At all. Honestly, if this is your understanding of the Constitution, there's probably not much more value in me continuing this discussion.
Pretty much nobody could sincerely claim that the Price Force counts. A huge number of people could sincerely say that the Air Force counts. The object level is important.
Creating the Price Press is something the government can do using its ordinary powers. The free press clause isn't granting it authority at all.
The free press clause only comes into effect when the government tries to shut it down.
Why not? Frankly, I just don't believe this whatsoever. This is nothing but an argument from personal incredulity. I guess this is what you're left with after your prior tests didn't work out. There's simply not a single shred of reasoning here.
No.
No, it's an argument "people don't think that". It is possible to observe people and draw conclusions about what they might think. "People don't think this" isn't an argument from personal incredulity.
Yes. The government can spend money on lots and lots of things. Consider that the government actually has things like the Voice of America, subsidies to NPR, etc. The Price Press isn't all that different from that.
Facts not in evidence. Especially facts from our hypothetical universe. You can't build a Constitutional test that is just your imagination of what some hypothetical people might think. I want to know what the Constitution says. I happen to think that something like textualism + original public meaning is approximately right. I think a school of Constitutional interpretation that is "I imagined in my head what I think some people I imagined might think in a hypothetical" is part of how we've gotten into this mess, because it's much easier to change people's imaginations than it is to change the Constitution.
This is precisely the point of why I started this all the way back here. People have gotten this stupid idea in their brain that the spending clause authorizes literally any spending that the government chooses to do. This is just simply not true. There are, indeed, precedents to this effect already. My point is that people need to be real about this.
Moreover, this undercuts literally everything else you've argued. The Price Force must also be Constitutional, literally the opposite of the thing you've just been arguing, because "that's just the government spending money". You are literally now embodying the worst position that must be eliminated.
Precisely. The point of this whole entire chain of comments, from the very beginning, was to get people back on track to realize that all sorts of stuff like that are not acceptable. As I wrote:
All laws are going to require some amount of common sense to apply. "What do (sincere) people think" is an inherent part of having laws.
If you think that the government shouldn't be funding media anyway, then ask the question on a more general level: Could the government claim that anything whatsoever counts as the press, and then apply freedom of the press to it? Could it do so for religion or speech, for that matter? If the government could not apply those to anything whatsoever, why wouldn't similar reasoning prevent them from considering the Price Force to be like an army or navy?
Because you're not letting it! I want to be able to have (good) reasoning that does this! (Not terrible reasoning like "I'm imagining hypothetical people, and my imagination is telling me that they think things.") But you're telling me that it's absolutely Constitutionally allowed, because of the spending clause.
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