Month: April 2024

States are cracking down on deepfakes ahead of the 2024 election

Posted on by ajk1311@gmail.com

“Indeed, while the Biden robocall deepfake impersonated the president, the message wasn’t designed to make Biden look bad by implicating him in a fake gaffe or scandal — rather, it was about discouraging voters from going out on election day. And this kind of risk isn’t always covered by the new laws being introduced.”

https://abcnews.go.com/538/states-cracking-deepfakes-ahead-2024-election/story?id=108517821

Why it always feels like the government is about to shut down

Posted on by ajk1311@gmail.com

“Over this 25-year stretch, Congress has passed its final annual funding package* an average of 113 days into the corresponding fiscal year, around Jan. 21. And that number is trending upward: Over the last decade, the government operated under stopgap funding measures for an average of 134 days, or into mid-February. We only need to look back two years, to fiscal 2022, to find the last time CRs stretched into March, and back to fiscal 2017 for an even longer impasse, which wasn’t resolved until early May.
This means Congress may spend half of each year struggling to complete its most basic responsibility of funding the government, at the expense of other legislative priorities. And even though passing CRs staves off government shutdowns, operating under short-term funding has costly, wide-ranging impacts on federal operations. Funding uncertainty makes it difficult for agencies to plan and budget effectively, often forcing them to delay major projects — an issue of particular concern when it comes to military readiness.”

…

“Strikingly, this year’s funding bill not only passed with fewer Republican than Democratic votes, but also with more than half of the Republican caucus voting against it (breaking the informal “Hastert rule” of House majority leadership). Johnson certainly isn’t the first embattled GOP speaker to struggle with a divided party, but this marks the first time in the 25 years we analyzed that any annual appropriations bill or package has passed without a majority of the majority’s support.”

https://abcnews.go.com/538/feels-government-shut/story?id=108891202

Political Stupidity and Bureaucratic Bungling Created New York’s Pot Legalization ‘Disaster’

Posted on by ajk1311@gmail.com

“New York’s rollout of marijuana legalization has been a “disaster,” as Hochul conceded in January. “Every other storefront” is an unlicensed pot shop, she told The Buffalo News. “It’s insane.”
That disaster has frustrated would-be retailers, left farmers in the lurch, played havoc with tax revenue projections, and made a joke out of any expectation that New York, by learning from the experience of states that legalized marijuana earlier, would do a better job of displacing the black market. The insanity that Hochul perceives is a product of bad decisions by politicians who should have known better and obstruction by regulators who sacrificed efficiency on the altar of diversity.

Unlike states such as New Jersey, where voters approved legalization in 2020, and Maryland, where a similar ballot initiative passed two years later, New York did not initially allow existing medical dispensaries to start serving the recreational market. Its slow and complicated licensing process, which was skewed by an “equity” program that prioritized approval of applicants with marijuana-related criminal records or their relatives, is maddeningly hard to navigate.

Those preferences invited lawsuits by people who were excluded, which further delayed approval of licenses. Guidance and financial help for people struggling to jump through the state’s hoops never materialized. And as in other states, high taxes and burdensome regulations have made it hard for licensed businesses to compete with unauthorized dealers.”

https://reason.com/2024/03/22/political-stupidity-and-bureaucratic-bungling-created-new-yorks-pot-legalization-disaster/

Blinken says China is Russia’s primary military complex supplier

Posted on by ajk1311@gmail.com

“U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken criticised on Friday Chinese support for Russia’s defence industry, saying Beijing was currently the primary contributor to Moscow’s war in Ukraine though its provision of critical components for weaponry.
He said this effort was fueling “the biggest threat to European security since the end of the Cold War.”

Speaking at a news conference capping the end of a gathering of G7 foreign ministers on the Italian island of Capri, Blinken said Washington had made it very clear to Beijing and others that they should not be aiding Russia’s war effort in Ukraine.

“When it comes to Russia’s defense industrial base the primary contributor in this moment to that is China. We see China sharing machine tools, semiconductors, other dual use items that have helped Russia rebuild the defense industrial base,” Blinken said.

“China can’t have it both ways. It can’t afford that. You want to have positive, friendly relations with countries in Europe, and at the same time, you are fueling the biggest threat to European security since the end of the Cold War,” Blinken said.

The U.S. has warned China not to aid Moscow’s war effort since Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which came just weeks after Russia and China declared a “no limits partnership.”

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock echoed Blinken’s concerns.

“If China openly pursues an ever closer partnership with Russia, which is waging an illegal war against Ukraine, … we cannot accept this,” Baerbock said after a meeting with her G7 counterparts in Capri.

U.S. officials briefed reporters earlier this month on materials China was providing to Russia, including drone and missile technology, satellite imagery and machine tools, that fall short of providing lethal assistance but were helping Russia build up its military to sustain its two-year-old war in Ukraine.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/blinken-says-china-russias-primary-125758842.html