“As Corn-Revere points out, “adopted in 1996, Section 230 was proposed as a way to counter efforts to censor internet speech.” Prior to its passage, online platforms were treated as publishers of material posted on their sites if they made any attempt at moderation. They were incentivized to allow free-for-alls, or else scrutinize all content for legal liability—or not allow third parties to post anything at all.
Included in the Communications Decency Act, Section 230’s important provisions survived the voiding of most of that law on constitutional grounds. It reads, in part: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” Those are the 26 words credited as creating the internet by Jeff Kosseff’s 2019 book. They also take the blame for what so many politicians hate about the online world.”
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“”For the biggest players, more carefully policing content would probably mean bolstering the ranks of thousands of hired moderators and facing down far more lawsuits,” added Shields and Brody. “For smaller players, the tech industry argues, it could prove ruinous.””
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“”The law is not a shield for Big Tech,” point out the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF) Aaron Mackey and Joe Mullin in defending Section 230. “Critically, the law benefits the millions of users who don’t have the resources to build and host their own blogs, email services, or social media sites, and instead rely on services to host that speech.””
“Joe Biden “was a key figure in passing the 1994 Crime Bill, which disproportionately harmed Black communities through harsh sentencing laws and increased incarceration rates,” Donald Trump’s campaign reminded voters last week. If elected, Trump promised in a speech at the Libertarian National Convention two days later, he will free Ross Ulbricht, who is serving a life sentence for running Silk Road, an online marketplace used by illegal drug vendors.
Trump’s criticism of disproportionate drug penalties contradicts his own platform, which threatens defendants like Ulbricht with death. The former and possibly future president wants to have it both ways, slamming Biden for his long history as a zealous drug warrior while portraying himself as even tougher.”
“if it’s win-win, why just make the minimum $20? Why not $30? Or $100?
Because government requiring higher wages is not a win-win.
Interfering with market prices always creates nasty unintended consequences.”
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“No. 1: Thousands of Californians have already lost jobs because some restaurants closed. Others lost income because their employer cut worker hours. The chain El Pollo Loco cut employees’ hours by 10 percent.
Pizza Hut announced that they will lay off more than a thousand delivery drivers. One such driver, Michael Ojeda, understandably asked, “What’s the point of a raise if you don’t have a job?”
No. 2: Workers who still have jobs will lose them because now their employers have more incentive to automate. Chipotle just created a robot that makes burrito bowls. Even CNN acknowledged, “Some restaurants are replacing [fast food workers] with kiosks.”
“In 2021, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act included $7.5 billion to build 500,000 public charging stations for electric vehicles (E.V.s) across the country in an effort to boost a switch to the use of clean energy.
As Reason reported in December, not one charger funded by the program had yet come online. Now, six months later, the number of functional charging stations has ticked up to eight.”
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“Why so little progress? Alexander Laska of the center-left Third Way think tank told Autoweek’s Jim Motavalli that the federal cash “comes with dozens of rules and requirements around everything from reliability to interoperability, to where stations can be located, to what certifications the workers installing the chargers need to have.” Laska says the regulations “are largely a good thing—we want drivers to have a seamless, convenient, reliable charging experience—but navigating all of that does add to the timeline.”
A spokesperson with the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, which administers $5 billion of the $7.5 billion total, further told Motavalli that the delay is because “we want to get it right.””
“As a matter of statutory law, the case against Biden is straightforward. He has publicly admitted that he was regularly smoking crack cocaine around the time he bought the gun, and prosecutors say investigators found cocaine residue on the leather pouch in which he had kept it. As a matter of constitutional law, the viability of the case is less clear”
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“Judging from survey data on drug use and gun ownership, something like 20 million Americans are committing that felony right now. The Justice Department prosecutes only a minuscule percentage of those potential defendants. That is partly because such cases are not a high priority, which tells you something about the logic of treating this offense as a felony that is currently punishable by up to 15 years in prison (thanks to legislation that Biden’s father signed in 2022). But the main reason that gun-owning drug users are rarely prosecuted is that the government generally does not know who they are.
The Biden exception to that rule is the result of two factors. If he had not publicly disclosed his drug use or if Hallie Biden had not publicly revealed his gun possession, there would have been no basis to charge him. But even at that point, federal prosecutors did not have to pursue the case, let alone treat a single gun purchase as three felonies. Here is where Weiss’ eagerness to show that Biden would not get a pass simply because he is the president’s son may have played a role.”
“At its current trajectory, the rising national debt—and the increasing burden of making interest payments on it—will reduce Americans’ future income growth by 12 percent over the next 30 years, the CBO projects in a new report. That means the average person will earn about $5,000 less annually than they would in a scenario where the debt was not growing.
“This is the result of crowding out, whereby a higher national debt reduces private investment and slows income growth,” explain the number crunchers at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a nonprofit that advocates for reducing the federal deficit. “With additional debt, income growth would slow further.””
“The number of migrants illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border has plummeted 40 percent since President Joe Biden clamped down on asylum earlier this month, administration officials said Wednesday.
Daily crossings have fallen below 2,400. That’s the lowest level since Jan. 17, 2021, right before the president took office. But encounters still remain too high for the president’s newly implemented restrictions to be lifted: Migrants will continue to be barred from seeking asylum in between ports of entry until average border crossings have fallen below 1,500 for seven consecutive days.”
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“It’s unclear if the slowdown in crossings will continue in the weeks or months ahead. Outside groups have also sued to block the new measures, placing it in some legal peril.”