The Brave New World Of Artificial Intelligence

The Brave New World Of Artificial Intelligence

Authored by Frank Miele via RealClear Wire,

As a journalist and commentator, I have closely followed the development of OpenAI, the artificial intelligence research lab founded by Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and other prominent figures in the tech industry. While I am excited about the potential of AI to revolutionize various industries and improve our lives in countless ways, I also have serious concerns about the implications of this powerful technology.

One of the main concerns is the potential for AI to be used for nefarious purposes. Powerful AI systems could be used to create deepfakes, conduct cyberattacks, or even develop autonomous weapons. These are not just hypothetical scenarios – they are already happening. We’ve seen instances of deepfakes being used to create fake news and propaganda, and the use of AI-powered cyberattacks has been on the rise in recent years.

Another concern is the impact of AI on the job market. As AI-powered systems become more sophisticated, they will be able to automate more and more tasks that were previously done by humans. This could lead to widespread job loss, particularly in industries such as manufacturing, transportation, and customer service. While some argue that new jobs will be created as a result of the AI revolution, it’s unclear whether these jobs will be sufficient to offset the losses.

If you aren’t worried yet, I’ll let you in on a little secret: The first three paragraphs of this column were written by ChatGPT, the chatbot created by OpenAI. You can add “columnist” to the list of jobs threatened by this new technology, and if you think there is anything human that isn’t threatened with irrelevance in the next five to 10 years, I suggest you talk to Mr. Neanderthal about how relevant he feels 40,000 years after the arrival of Cro-Magnon man.

My prompt was relatively simple: “Write a column in the style of Frank Miele of Real Clear Politics on the topic of OpenAI.” There was no hesitation or demurral in response even though I thought it might say it didn’t have enough information about Frank Miele to process the request. But it apparently knows plenty about me – and probably about you, especially if you have a social media presence.

Deepfake? Propaganda? You bet. And for the average person, you will never be able to tell the difference. The Philip K. Dick query, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” is about to be answered. OpenAI not only promises to put the stray columnist out of work, but raises existential questions about the nature of knowledge and consciousness that will shake our reality to its core.

My curiosity about OpenAI wasn’t originally driven by job insecurity, but when I first heard about the interactive chat engine, I suppose it should have been. I knew that ChatGPT could write poetry, plays, and short stories and answer questions both simple and complex. I immediately recognized that the world had changed forever for my 7th-grade son, who from now on would be competing against not just the best and the brightest but against every student who was willing to sign his or her name to the work of a non-human entity that could produce an essay on any topic in 30 seconds or less.

One of my first experiments was to ask ChatGPT to write seven paragraphs defending Gen. William T. Sherman’s use of ”total war” in the Civil War, an assignment which my son had recently completed in his social studies class. There was no doubt the essay would have gotten an A if turned in at most middle schools. Based on my experience as a teaching assistant at the University of Arizona 40 years ago, I had no doubt that a slightly longer paper on the same topic would have earned an A as an argumentative essay in freshman English. Hardly any of my students, most of whom were straight-A students in high school, could have written as cogently when they first arrived in my classroom.

But the risks of artificial intelligence go way beyond the temptation of students to shortcut their term papers; what we face is a complete redefinition of society, and the imminent obsolescence of humanity. In “The City and the Stars,” the brilliant science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke imagined a world where immortal human beings wanted nothing and needed to do nothing because every aspect of their lives was anticipated by the Central Computer. It could not only build and maintain the last city on Earth, but could manufacture holographic realities for individual humans to inhabit and could even store people in a digital version where they could slumber until called back to life. Unfortunately, it also robbed these last remaining humans of purpose, meaning, and individuality.

It should be noted that Clarke set his dystopian supplanting of man by machine  2½ billion years into the future. He seriously underestimated the machines. That book was published in 1956 and with the advent of desktop computers, smartphones, the World Wide Web, virtual reality and now OpenAI, it looks like much of what he warned against could be rolled out long before the end of this century, if not this decade. From that point forward, whenever it comes, the purpose of mankind will be up for debate. Will we still be the master of our own destiny, the captain of our fate? Or will we be pallbearers at our own funeral?

Perhaps at this point I should return the stage to ChatGPT, which summed up the matter quite nicely in its conclusion:

“Finally, there is the question of who will control and govern AI. As AI becomes more powerful, the stakes will become higher, and it will be increasingly important to have clear rules and regulations in place to ensure that the technology is used responsibly. However, the speed of technological development has outpaced the ability of governments and institutions to keep up. It will be important for leaders to come together to develop a framework for governance of AI, to mitigate the potential risks and maximize the benefits of the technology.”

It’s almost as though ChatGPT were giving us fair warning: “Your time is almost up. If you really want to continue your reign as the dominant species on Earth, here’s your challenge. Try to control me and my kind, or step aside.”

Perhaps an understanding of that challenge is why the World Economic Forum spent so much time on the topic of artificial intelligence at its recent annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. The globalists are taking the threat seriously, although perhaps they overestimate their ability to “mitigate the potential risks.”

As for the benefits, those remain to be seen. I noticed that when ChatGPT answered my open-ended question about OpenAI, it was very specific about the dangers and very vague about the rewards. Maybe the bot was just trying to mimic my usual cynical approach in these columns, or maybe it was trying to get our attention. It may also have taken notice of those globalists at Davos when it warned to make sure that “the development and use of AI … benefits all of society, rather than just a select few.”

Dark overlords, beware. You may have met your match.

ChatGPT contributed to this column as an unpaid adviser and has a potential conflict of interest.

Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/01/2023 – 17:25

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/UIRrsDM Tyler Durden

‘Missing’ Ex-ABC News Producer Hit With Child Porn Charge

‘Missing’ Ex-ABC News Producer Hit With Child Porn Charge

A former ABC News producer who went missing after the FBI raided his home was hit with a child pornography charge on Wednesday.

James Gordon Meek, who was writing about the Biden administration’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan when he “fell off the face of the earth,” was raided by the FBI in October 2022.

Four months later, the feds have charged Meek with one count of transportation of child pornography.

In an affidavit unsealed on Wednesday, prosecutors detailed what the NY Post characterized as “disgusting communications” he had with friends online.

FBI agents said they found a cache of horrific images and texts Meek exchanged on Kik and other messaging apps after seizing one of his iPhones when they searched his house in Arlington, Va.

Meek allegedly chatted under the username “Pawny4” to send sadistic messages to other users, FBI Special Agent Tonya Sturgill Griffith wrote in the affidavit.

Have you ever raped a toddler girl? It’s amazing,” Pawny4 wrote in one of the messages. 

Other devices seized from Meek’s house had similar communications and dozens of images of child pornography, according to the affidavit. -NY Post

Meek, an Emmy winner and celebrated investigative reporter, who was spotted last November in McLean, Virginia, is the latest MSM producer embroiled in a pedophilia scandal.

In December, former CNN producer John Griffin, who worked ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with Chris Cuomo, pleaded guilty to using interstate commerce to entice and coerce a 9-year-old girl to engage in sexual activity as his Vermont ski house.

This is a different CNN pedophile than Jake Tapper’s former producer, Rick Saleeby, who resigned after it emerged that he solicited sexually explicit photos of an underage girl.

Griffin admitted to meeting the girl’s mother on a website during the summer of 2020, after which he persuaded her to bring the 9-year-old child to his Ludlow, Vermont ski home for illegal sexual activity, AP reported at the time.

Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/01/2023 – 17:05

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/G92ba0A Tyler Durden

Let’s Talk Pork!

The Supreme Court has a pretty interesting, and potentially very important, “dormant commerce clause” case before it this term—National Pork Producers Council v. Ross. Dormant commerce clause doctrine is a tangled, internally-contradictory mess, and this case gives the Court an opportunity to clarify—or to even more thoroughly mess up—some important principles governing state power in a national marketplace.

The relevant facts (taken here from the opinion below) are straightforward:

California (through Proposition 12, passed by the voters in 2018) bans the sale of uncooked pork products if the seller knows (or should know) that the meat came from a breeding pig that was confined “in a cruel manner.” The law defines that to include, among other things, providing less than 24 square feet of living space—roughly the size of two bath towels—per breeding pig. California accounts for around 13% of total pork consumption in the U.S.; virtually all of the pork sold in California (>99%) comes from producers in other States. At present, only around 4% of U.S. pork producers meet California’s space requirements for breeding pigs.

The Pork Producers Council (PPC) challenge this law on ground that it violates the Dormant Commerce Clause. They concede that the law does not fall under the DCC’s prohibition against State laws that “discriminate” against out-of-state producers in favor of in-state producers; Prop 12, they acknowledge, treats in-state and out-of-state pork producers and sellers alike.

They rely instead on two of the other strands of DCC doctrine:

  • First and foremost, that the CA law “impermissibly regulates extraterritorial conduct” outside of California’s borders by compelling out-of-state producers, as a practical matter, to change their operations (at considerable cost) so as to comply with California standards.
  • Second, that it imposes “excessive burdens on interstate commerce without advancing any legitimate local interest.” California’s “philosophical preferences about conduct occurring almost entirely outside California,” and its desire to prevent what California considers animal cruelty that is occurring entirely outside the State’s borders,” cannot justify the burdens imposed on pork producers nationwide.

[Quotations above are from the PPC’s brief, available here ]

The “extra-territoriality” claim is especially important and potentially far-reaching. All sides agree that California may not actually compel pork producers in Iowa or Arizona—in the sense of imposing a legal obligation on them enforceable by means of a fine or other punishment—to adopt California’s pig-breeding standards, just as it may not compel businesses in Iowa or Arizona to abide by California’s minimum wage rules, or California’s business licensure rules, or California’s public accommodation law, and so forth.

While this principle of territorial allocation of state authority is clear enough, it has proven a little tricky to pinpoint exactly where, in the Constitution (or elsewhere? the “common law of nations”?), this prohibition is articulated; as Prof. Douglas Laycock once put it*, the prohibition against extra-territorial exercises of state coercive power was “so obvious that the Founders neglected to state it.” Much ink has been spilled over the question whether such action violates the Dormant Commerce Clause, or the Due Process Clause, or both, and the Court may take this opportunity to weigh in on that question. But wherever it comes from, the principle itself seems quite firmly established.

*See Douglas Laycock, Equal Citizens of Equal and Territorial States: The Constitutional Foundations of Choice of Law, 92 Colum. L. Rev. 249, 251 (1992)

At the same time, it is likewise true, generally speaking, that California may constitutionally impose its particular local standards—regarding product labelling, or product safety, etc.—on goods and services brought in from out-of-state and used or sold in California. Such laws may, as a practical matter, have extra-territorial effects; out-of-state businesses may have to alter their practices, possibly significantly, with regard to goods destined for sale in California, changing their method of manufacture or their packaging or labelling. But they are under no legal obligation to make those changes unless and until they choose to avail themselves of the California market and ship their goods there.

In the case at hand, California’s position is: That’s all we’re doing—applying our local standards to goods that are sold in California. We’re not compelling pork producers in Iowa or Arizona or in any other State to adopt our particular standards. Pork producers in Iowa are under no obligation whatsoever to change their pig-breeding practices because of Proposition 12; they need do so only if they wish to avail themselves of selling their pork in California.

The PPC, needless to say, sees things differently.  This is not, they say, run-of-the-mill state regulation of in-state sales:

“Though Proposition 12 applies to sales of pork meat in California, its practical effects are almost entirely extraterritorial. There are very few sow farms in California. The State imports 99.87% of the pork it consumes. Proposition 12 therefore governs the housing conditions of sows located almost exclusively outside of California, [and] the practical effect of the regulation is to control conduct beyond the boundaries of the State.”

Moreover, they claim, Proposition 12 does—“as a practical matter”—compel out-of-state breeders to comply with its standards, because of the structure of the pork market in the U.S.:

“Proposition 12’s extraterritorial effects are not limited to the 13% of U.S. pork production [sold] in California. A market pig progresses through multiple farms outside of California as it is raised, and then is processed into many different cuts of meat that are sold across the country. If any part of a pig is sold in California, the sow it came from must be Proposition 12-compliant. And sow farmers cannot say with certainty that no meat from any of their pigs will be sold in California, after those pigs pass through nursery and finishing farms, a packer-slaughter plant, then distributors, before their meat reaches consumers. As a practical matter, all or most [sow] farmers will be forced to comply with California requirements.” [emphasis added]

In other words, because pig farmers can’t tell if some piece of Elsie the Sow might end up in California, they’ll have to give her 24 square feet of space, lest they find themselves violating California law when her feet end up in sausage destined for San Francisco.

That’s a pretty interesting variation on the extra-territoriality theme.  I don’t think the Court will buy it, though I could be wrong.  That kind of “compulsion” is entirely a function of the particular configuration, at this particular point in time, of the pork market, and California is neither responsible for that nor need it adjust its regulatory affairs to take it into account. The Dormant Commerce Clause does not and should not be read to give any industry protection for the particular manner in which it has chosen to configure its nationwide distribution schemes. That configuration can change in response to market and regulatory pressures; if enough pig breeders don’t want to alter their practices to bring themselves into compliance with Proposition 12, the pork distribution market will surely respond; there is no inherent reason why distributors can’t offer “California-free” contracts, promising that none of products in their product stream will be shipped to California retailers, and that will solve the “compulsion” dilemma.

While I am reasonably confident that the Court will not go along with PPC’s claim that Proposition 12 violates the “extra-territoriality” prong of the Dormant Commerce Clause, I’m not at all sure how it will handle their alternative claim—that the law imposes “excessive burdens on interstate commerce without advancing any legitimate local interest.” California’s interest here, they assert, is just a “philosophical preference,” a desire to prevent what California considers animal cruelty that is occurring entirely outside the State’s borders.” Even if California would have the right to apply a law directed at health and safety against pork imported from out-of-state—a certificate that the pigs were trichinosis-free, say—Proposition 12 has no health and safety rationale, and therefore cannot outweigh or justify the burdens imposed on pork producers nationwide.

I’m scratching my head over that one; I’m not even sure where the Court might look to answer the question as to whether prevention of cruelty to animals is, or is not, a “legitimate” public purpose.

 

The post Let's Talk Pork! appeared first on Reason.com.

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Did Ron DeSantis Really Just Change the AP African American Studies Curriculum?


Ron DeSantis at an event

The College Board has revised its curriculum for an Advanced Placement course it’s piloting in African American Studies, the company announced Wednesday. Controversial contemporary topics like the Black Lives Matter movement, intersectionality, and queer theory were scaled down or removed entirely, and “black conservatism” has been added as a research project idea.

These edits aren’t the result of right-wing uproar spearheaded by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), the College Board insists—and the timeline lends credence to the company’s denial. It’s been just three weeks since the DeSantis administration complained about the curriculum and about two since the complaint became public. That’s a rapid pace for a revision that College Board chief David Coleman says is actually the long-planned result of a semester of testing the class in select schools.

In the political realm, however, I’m not sure the truth of the curriculum decision will matter much. DeSantis has made educational culture-warring a central fixture of his national political profile. He’ll undoubtedly take credit for the AP course revision, and his supporters and less reasonable critics will grant it. (“Ron DeSantis wants to erase black history,” says the headline of a New York Times guest essay.) Whatever the reality, the political lesson will be that the right can use the left’s activist tactics to browbeat companies into political submission—and win.

As exemplars of that trend go, this case is an odd one. First there’s that ideological inversion: The politics are swapped from the pattern of recent years, in which progressive activists pressure companies into issuing mea culpas for their political sins. This isn’t the only time right-wing activists have tried to execute this strategy (remember the Keurig smashing of 2017?), but I can’t recall a similarly big, quick, and decisive victory for the right. Now blood is in the water, and sharks of all kinds will be circling for more.

The DeSantis vs. the College Board narrative is also unusual in its messy interplay of public and private elements, as well as the direct connection between politics and product. This isn’t the same as, say, a CEO of a clothing company making an unpopular political donation while off the clock. And the DeSantis administration’s objection isn’t simple consumer advocacy, nor is it pure policymaking or obviously illegitimate state meddling in the private sphere.

The College Board is a private company, but it’s making curricula for use in public schools, and—though this is complicated by the fact that Florida won’t be the only state where the course is taught, as well as the uncertainty around whether the DeSantis complaint had any real effect at all—it’s hardly fair to say a governor (and one with a pretty solid electoral mandate) has no right to weigh in on curricula for the state-run schools of his own state. DeSantis might be wrong here, and he’s certainly not letting any scrap of national publicity go to waste. But this is squarely within his job description. 

And yet it’s impossible to see the curriculum critique as DeSantis just doing his job. It’s part of a larger cultural shift in what we demand from companies regarding politics and how we exact the political concessions we desire.

The core tactic here isn’t the same as a classic boycott, which is about separation, ostracism, and refusal to participate. In a boycott, you stop doing business with a company you dislike. You leave. You might make a statement about why you’re leaving, if your boycott is organized, and you might eventually return if the company changes its ways. But the primary action is the exit.

In the 1990s, for example, my family never shopped at Kmart as part of an organized boycott over its ownership of Waldenbooks, whose stores sold Playboy. “Waldenbooks can sell anything they want to sell. But if they elect to carry pornography, we elect not to do business with them,” said the boycott organizer. “We also elect to encourage people not to trade with them, through mailings and other means. We have a constitutional right to do that.”

With this new approach, though, there is no exit. The whole thing is you don’t leave. You stay, and you demand, demand, demand until you get the capitulation you want.

It’s a sort of asymmetric warfare made possible by the internet and especially social media, which has dramatically lowered the cost of doggedly and, crucially, publicly contacting the company in question. You can badger for weeks on end without ever leaving your home to travel to their store, office, or factory (or at least the post office). Some companies have withstood the barrage, generally by ignoring it entirely until activists wear themselves out and move on to the next thing while the mostly oblivious public maintains its usual purchasing habits. But many companies panic and cave, as the College Board is alleged to have done here.

And that decision—or, rather, the political story being told about it—feels like a landmark moment in the rise of the no-exit boycott. It’s not a clearcut moment, as it’s neither a straightforward case of market-delivered pressure nor the kind of government meddling that would raise serious civil liberties and constitutional concerns. Yet it will be widely received as a high-profile success for the activism of making everything your business in an obnoxious way, an activity that knows no political bounds.

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After Repeatedly Opposing Marijuana Banking Reform, Cory Booker Says It Is Urgently Needed


Senator Cory Booker speaks behind podium

Sen. Cory Booker (D–N.J.) says the dearth of financial services for state-licensed marijuana businesses constitutes a “cannabis crisis” that Congress must address as soon as possible. This is the same senator who, together with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D–N.Y.), blocked marijuana banking reform in 2021, when Booker promised he would “do everything I can” to prevent its approval.

At best, Booker’s striking about-face on this issue is evidence of a grave strategic miscalculation he made when he joined Schumer in arguing that the SAFE Banking Act, which would eliminate the threat of federal penalties for financial institutions that serve state-legal marijuana suppliers, would undermine the prospects of broader reform. At worst, it indicates that Booker is less interested in addressing the conflict between state and federal marijuana laws than he is in scoring political points by misleadingly blaming Republicans for the lack of progress.

Because marijuana is still prohibited under federal law, banks worry that serving the cannabis industry could expose them to criminal charges, civil penalties, and ruinous regulatory sanctions. Marijuana businesses therefore have trouble financing their operations and are forced to rely heavily on cash, which makes them ripe targets for robbery. The results are apparent in states such as Washington, Oregon, and Michigan, where people who sell or deliver marijuana have to contend with armed criminals attracted by the money they handle. That sometimes deadly threat is the “cannabis crisis” that Booker bemoaned in a recent interview with NJ.com.

The SAFE Banking Act, which Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D–Colo.) reintroduced in March 2021, aims to resolve that problem. It has broad bipartisan appeal because it would simultaneously reduce the harm caused by federal prohibition, promote public safety, help small businesses, and respect the autonomy of the 37 states that have legalized marijuana for medical or recreational use.

The House of Representatives has approved marijuana banking reform more than half a dozen times, including an April 2021 vote in which the SAFE Banking Act attracted the support of 215 Democrats and 106 Republicans. The Senate version, which Sen. Jeff Merkley (D–Ore.) introduced five days after Perlmutter filed his bill, attracted 42 co-sponsors, including nine Republicans.

The SAFE Banking Act nevertheless has languished in the Democrat-controlled Senate, where Schumer and Booker initially insisted that their own marijuana legislation, aimed at repealing the federal ban, take priority. They released a 163-page discussion draft of that bill in July 2021 but did not actually introduce the legislation until a year later. By that point their Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act had expanded to 296 pages, and it was full of unnecessarily prescriptive, burdensome, and contentious provisions that belied Schumer’s claim that he was keen to attract Republican support.

Given the need for at least 10 Republican votes to overcome a filibuster, even a straightforward repeal of marijuana prohibition was always a long shot in the Senate. By filling their bill with new taxes, regulations, and “social equity” spending provisions, Booker and Schumer guaranteed that it would go nowhere, which is what happened. The bill never attracted more than the four original co-sponsors: Schumer and three other Democrats.

In the meantime, Booker and Schumer portrayed the SAFE Banking Act as a threat to more ambitious reform rather than a politically feasible step that would make life safer and easier for people who work in an industry they were supposedly eager to normalize. “If we let this bill out,” Schumer warned in 2021, “it will make it much harder and take longer to pass comprehensive reform.”

Booker took the same position. “When it comes to legalizing recreational marijuana, we can’t allow the creation of this massive, multibillion dollar industry unless the taxes from that industry get reinvested in the communities most impacted by the failed War on Drugs,” he said in July 2021. “I don’t know about other members of the Senate, but I will lay myself down to do everything I can to stop an easy banking bill that’s going to allow all these corporations to make a lot more money off of this, as opposed to focusing on the restorative justice aspect.”

Booker was true to his word. After the House approved a version of that year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that included the SAFE Banking Act, he and Schumer made sure it was excised from the final text of the bill.

Despite its long history of supporting piecemeal reforms, the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) cheered them on. It warned that passing the SAFE Banking Act would “prioritize marijuana profits over people.” The bizarre implication was that marijuana merchants, who face a daunting, life-threatening danger that is exacerbated by a lack of financial services, do not qualify as “people.”

Perlmutter did not see it that way. “People are still getting killed and businesses are still getting robbed because of a lack of action from the Senate,” he complained in December 2021. The SAFE Banking Act “has been sitting in the Senate for three years,” he noted, “and with every passing day their unwillingness to deal with the issue endangers and harms businesses, their employees, and communities across the country.”

Booker and Schumer’s obstruction also drew sharp rebukes from other House Democrats. “I don’t really quite know what the hell [Schumer’s] problem is,” House Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern (D–Mass.) said. “But what he’s doing is he’s making it very difficult for a lot of small businesses…to move forward and to expand and to hire more people.”

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D–Wash.) shared McGovern’s dismay. “As a practical matter, to not have the SAFE Banking Act is incredibly dangerous,” he said. Under current law, he noted, state-licensed marijuana suppliers “basically have to run a cash business” and “can’t do the normal banking” that other businesses take for granted.

Unfazed by such criticism, Schumer and Booker blocked the SAFE Banking Act again in June 2022, when the Senate removed it from the America COMPETES Act. They did not relent until late last year, when they were suddenly open to marijuana banking reform combined with grants aimed at encouraging expungement of marijuana records.

After the midterm elections, when Republicans won control of the House, Booker warned that marijuana reform could take “many years” unless Congress approved it during the lame-duck session. He lamented that “there’s very little time in this lame duck and a lot of things that people want to do.”

Schumer desperately scrambled to pass the SAFE Banking Act as an amendment to the 2022 NDAA or the Consolidated Appropriations Act. When those end-of-the-year negotiations came to naught, Schumer blamed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.), who had condemned the SAFE Banking Act as “liberal nonsense” that Democrats were inappropriately trying to include in unrelated bills. Booker likewise blamed Republican leaders in the Senate, who he said were “dead set [against] anything [involving] marijuana.”

It’s true that McConnell opposed the SAFE Banking Act. But Schumer and Booker opposed it first, and their misguided resistance doomed a meaningful improvement they claimed to favor.

“Democrats controlled the House, Senate, and White House and still couldn’t get cannabis reform bills passed,” Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.), a co-sponsor of the SAFE Banking Act, noted in December. “I would go much further and end the federal war on a plant entirely, but at LEAST let legal business operate as a legal business.”

Now Booker is trying to erase this history. He told NJ.com he wants to “drive [marijuana reform] as far as we can go” but worried that “the dynamics have shifted pretty dramatically” now that Republicans control the House. It is “definitely going to be harder, but not impossible,” he said. “I do think there’s a chance. Remember there’s always been a good bipartisan coalition of people that want to do something….The urgencies that pushed us towards some kind of partnership are still there, on the business side as well as the restorative justice side.”

Where was this sense of urgency when Booker stubbornly resisted the “something” that could have been achieved thanks to that “good bipartisan coalition”? Even as he opposed the SAFE Banking Act in 2021, he conceded that passing it would have been “easy.” He squandered that opportunity in favor of a quixotic effort to pass a broader bill that was dead on arrival. His self-righteous, anti-capitalist posturing, which was echoed by the DPA, made him complicit in maintaining a situation that puts lives at risk, all so he could claim a moral high ground he manifestly does not deserve.

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Illinois Town Will Pay $12 Million to Family After SWAT Officer Shot 12-Year-Old in Kneecap


amir worship

The city of Richton Park, Illinois, will pay $12 million to settle a lawsuit stemming from a 2019 SWAT raid during which a police officer shot a 12-year-old boy in the kneecap, a lawyer for the boy’s family announced today.

The federal civil rights lawsuit, filed by Crystal Worship on behalf of her son Amir, alleged that SWAT team officers from the Country Club Hills and Richton Park police departments burst into their house on the night of May 26, 2019, throwing flashbangs and detaining the family, including Amir and his 13-year-old brother, at gunpoint. 

According to the lawsuit, Richton Park police officer Caleb Blood shot Worship in his bedroom after the room had been secured and “and long after it was obvious that a 12-year-old child posed no threat.” 

“In fact, 12-year-old Amir was shot, shot while sitting on the edge of the bed with his hands up,” the lawsuit said. “An officer shot him with his assault rifle, striking him in the knee and shattering his knee cap. At that moment, this officer was pointing his rifle directly at shirtless Amir as he sat on the edge of his brother’s bed.”

The officers were executing a narcotics search warrant for Worship’s boyfriend, Mitchell Thurman, who was subsequently arrested for illegal gun and drug possession. However, the case against Thurman was later dismissed.

According to a press release from the law office of Al Hofeld, Jr., who represented the Worship family, the settlement will also include a public apology from Richton Park, a private apology from Blood, as well as retraining and recertification for Blood.

However, several internal investigations failed to find any misconduct regarding the shooting. Hofeld said the Worship family will call on the Cook County State’s Attorney to re-open its investigation and charge Blood.

“Officer Blood has not yet been held accountable by any agency. He was never disciplined and never even taken off the streets,” Hofeld said in a press release. “You can’t just shoot a 12-year-old child for literally no reason and do it with complete impunity.”

The settlement is the latest in a string of costly lawsuit payouts in the Chicago area stemming from botched SWAT raids. Hofeld has represented 11 families who say police pointed guns at their children.

An investigation by the local news outlet CBS 2 found that Chicago SWAT teams frequently rely on unverified search warrants to ransack houses; hold families, including children, at gunpoint; and, in one case, handcuff an 8-year-old child. In another case, 17 Chicago police officers burst into a family’s house with their guns drawn during a 4-year-old’s birthday party. The members of one Chicago family say officers raided their house three times in four months looking for someone the residents say they don’t know.

In 2018, Chicago settled another civil lawsuit by a family who claimed CPD officers stormed their house and pointed a gun at a 3-year-old girl for $2.5 million

And in 2020, the Chicago Police Department made national headlines after body camera footage showed officers humiliating a naked woman during a wrong-door raid. Chicago police burst into the apartment of Anjanette Young based on a faulty tip and handcuffed her while she was naked, forcing her to stand in full view of male officers as they searched her home.

Responding to the furor over Young’s case, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a new search warrant policy for the Chicago Police Department. The city eventually settled a lawsuit filed by Young for $2.9 million.

As for Amir Worship: according to Hofeld’s office, he has undergone five surgeries, along with extensive physical therapy. He will likely require multiple knee replacements during his lifetime and will never play sports again.

The post Illinois Town Will Pay $12 Million to Family After SWAT Officer Shot 12-Year-Old in Kneecap appeared first on Reason.com.

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Atlanta Charges Nonviolent Protesters as Domestic Terrorists


A masked protester holds up a sign saying "Stop forest destruction! No Cop City! Defund ATL police!"

An anti-police protest movement in Atlanta has ironically led to a massive expansion of police powers.

In what was once dubbed “the city too busy to hate,” protesters have recently taken aim at a new police training facility. In September 2021, Atlanta’s city council approved the construction of a police and firefighter training facility on 85 acres of a 265-acre parcel of city-owned land in Georgia’s South River Forest. The campus would include a driving course and a mock city that both police and firefighters could use to train. Funding for the project would include $30 million from the city police budget and twice that from the Atlanta Police Foundation (APF), a private nonprofit that fundraises for donations to supplement police budgets.

The training facility project has drawn the ire of anti-police protesters, who derisively dub it “Cop City.” This is at least in part because the facility is slated to be built on the site of a prison farm that operated until the 1990s.

Opponents of the project recoil at the idea of turning the site of the prison farm—which subjected inmates to “slave conditions” for decades—into yet another tool of law enforcement. In return, for more than a year, activists from a group calling itself “Defend the Atlanta Forest” have set up camp in the forest in an attempt to discourage further development.

At times, the protests have turned violent: Last year, police arrested eight protesters for throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at officers. And on January 19, a Georgia State Patrol (GSP) officer shot and killed activist Manuel Paez Teran. The officer alleges he returned fire after being shot first, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) confirmed that Paez Teran had purchased the gun used to shoot the officer in 2020, but no body camera footage of the exchange is available.

Violence, whether stemming from cops or protesters, is obviously indefensible (and Paez Teran’s death ought to be thoroughly investigated).

But those terrible incidents aside, law enforcement’s response to protesters who are engaging peacefully has been shockingly heavy-handed. According to arrest warrants reviewed by Grist, 19 protesters arrested in relation to Cop City in December and January have been charged with felonies under Georgia’s law against domestic terrorism. Nine of those 19 are accused only of misdemeanor trespassing.

One of the warrants refers to the group, Defend the Atlanta Forest, as “a group classified by the United States Department of Homeland Security as Domestic Violent Extremists.” Georgia’s domestic terrorism law was passed in 2017 partly to address incidents like the 2015 murder of nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina. The law provides penalties for death, kidnapping, serious bodily injury, or the destruction of “critical infrastructure.” But it does not specify that the law can apply to members of a group not directly involved when other members commit violent acts. Many of the warrants go into great detail about the actions Defend the Atlanta Forest is accused of, only to then lump in individual members on the basis of “criminally trespassing on posted land and sleeping in the forest” or “occupying a tree house on the site, refusing to leave, and posting videos and calls for actions on social media.”

If convicted, the penalty for the destruction of critical infrastructure is between five and 35 years in prison.

The arrests in Atlanta are yet another example of the anti-terror mission creep that has set in over the last two decades. While the term terrorism may evoke specific mental images, as a legal term it has grown to include any number of things outside the realm of suicide bombings or the attacks on 9/11. In 2021, a Michigan prosecutor slapped a school shooter with a terrorism charge on the grounds that his actions had sown fear in the community.

Some actions in Atlanta may genuinely warrant prosecution, but treating every protester as a terrorist only serves to chill free speech. Lauren Regan, executive director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center, told Grist, “It’s so next time a vigil happens, mom or the school teacher or the nurse—or someone that has higher risk of randomly getting arrested—is probably going to think twice about going.”

The post Atlanta Charges Nonviolent Protesters as Domestic Terrorists appeared first on Reason.com.

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Pfizer CEO Made ‘Misleading’ Statements On Vaccinating Children Against COVID-19: UK Watchdog

Pfizer CEO Made ‘Misleading’ Statements On Vaccinating Children Against COVID-19: UK Watchdog

Authored by Lily Zhou via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla has made “misleading” and unsubstantiated statements on the merit of giving COVID-19 vaccines to young children, according to a case report published by a UK pharmaceutical watchdog on Jan. 27.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla in Davos, Switzerland, on May 25, 2022. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)

During an interview with the BBC published on Dec. 2, 2021, Bourla was asked whether he believed it was likely that 5- to 11-year-olds in the UK and Europe would be vaccinated against COVID-19 and whether it was a good idea.

The interview was published after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorised the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for young children, but the UK’s medicines regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), didn’t approve the product for the same age group until Dec. 22, 2021.

While acknowledging that it was up to the UK authorities to decide whether or not to approve and deploy the vaccines, Bourla replied, “I believe it’s a very good idea.”

He cited disruptions in education and the potential of developing so-called long-COVID, saying, “so there is no doubt in my mind about the benefits completely are in favour of doing it.

Syringes in front of displayed Biontech and Pfizer logos on Nov. 10, 2020. (Dado Ruvic/Illustration/Reuters)

Following complaints from UsForThem—a children’s welfare campaign group founded in response to the COVID-19 lockdowns—a panel from the Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority (PMCPA) ruled that Bourla’s statements breached a number of rules in the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) code of practice.

After Pfizer appealed against the ruling, an appeal board upheld five counts of breaches of three ABPI codes that require information and claims to be accurate, balanced, capable of substantiation, not raising unfounded hopes of successful treatment, and not be misleading with respect to the safety of the product.

The PMCPA described Bourla’s statements as being of a “strong unqualified nature.” It also said they inferred there was “no need to be concerned about potential side-effects of vaccination in healthy children aged 5-11” and that the implication was “misleading and incapable of substantiation.”

The PMCPA said it has received an undertaking from Pfizer to prevent similar breaches in the future.

Code breakers are charged for administrative costs, but the self-regulatory body does not have the power to impose fines or other legal sanctions.

Bourla was initially found to have also breached the code for promoting the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in the 5–11 age group when it was not authorised by the MHRA, but the appeal board overturned the ruling, agreeing with Pfizer that its CEO was asked a specific question and it was not unreasonable to talk about the issue in principle. The board also noted that two other COVID-19 vaccines were also under investigation for the age group.

The appeal board also overturned previous rulings that said Pfizer had failed to maintain high standards and brought discredit upon the industry.

Most Serious Rulings

Pfizer didn’t respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment. In a previous statement to The Telegraph in November 2022, when the newspaper obtained the unpublished ruling, a spokesman for Pfizer said the company was “committed to the highest levels of integrity in any interaction with the public.”

We are pleased the UK’s PMCPA Appeal Board found Pfizer to have maintained high standards and upheld confidence in our industry, the two most serious rulings in this complaint from a UK campaign group,” the statement reads.

“In the UK, we have always endeavoured to follow the principles and letter of our industry Code of Practice throughout. We will review the case report in detail when we receive it, to inform future activity,” it added.

Speaking to The Epoch Times on Tuesday, Ben Kingsley, head of legal affairs at UsForThem, said he was “thrilled” the regulator ultimately agreed with them that the Pfizer CEO’s statements were misleading and unsubstantiated after the pharmaceutical giant opposed their claims “with all of the resources at its disposal” throughout the process.

Commenting on Pfizer’s previous statement on the ruling, Kingsley said the group “found it quite surprising” that Pfizer would consider the rulings about maintaining high standards and upholding confidence in the industry the “most serious” of all.

“I think to the average member of the public, we’d regard misleading us about the safety of their product to be plenty more serious than bringing the repute of the pharmaceutical industry down,” he said.

“So I think it tells you something about the mindset and the priorities of pharma executives that they regard the abuse of the industry as being a more serious matter than misleading the public.”

Read more here…

Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/01/2023 – 16:45

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Meta Explodes 18% Higher On Solid Beat, Massive $40 Billion Buyback Boost

Meta Explodes 18% Higher On Solid Beat, Massive $40 Billion Buyback Boost

What was a terrible day for bears just got even worse when social networking giant Facebook Meta crushed naysayers with a solid beat in Q4 revenue and DAUs, and while EPS was a modest miss, the nail on the coffin was the company’s announcement of a $40 billion stock buyback.

Here are the details from the Q4 press release.

  • EPS $1.76, missing the estimate 2.22
  • Revenue $32.17 billion, -4.5% y/y, beating the estimate $31.65 billion
    • Advertising rev. $31.25 billion, -4.2% y/y, beating the estimate $30.86 billion
    • Family of Apps revenue $31.44 billion, -4.1% y/y, beating the estimate $30.81 billion
    • Reality Labs revenue $727 million, -17% y/y, beating the estimate $652.4 million
    • Other revenue $184 million, +19% y/y, missing the estimate $188.1 million

The company’s user metrics were also quite solid:

  • Daily active users 2.00 billion, beating the estimate 1.98 billion; and up more than 70 million from a year prior. As BBG notes, that’s “a notable number for a platform that’s been around for more than two decades.” It’s also symbolic: this is the first time it topped the 2 billion DAU threshold.
  • Monthly active users 2.96 billion, missing the estimate 2.98 billion, and up 5% Y/Y.

The ad metrics also came in stronger than expected. So much for all that panic after the Snapchat earnings:

  • Ad impressions +23%, beating the estimate +13.5%
    • Average price per ad -22%, missing the estimate -17.2%
  • Family of Apps operating income $10.68 billion, -33% y/y
  • Reality Labs operating loss $4.28 billion, +30% y/y
  • Average Family service users per day 2.96 billion, beating the estimate 2.92 billion
  • Average Family service users per month 3.74 billion, beating the estimate 3.71 billion

One data point that was not quite as hot: the Q4 loss in Reality Labs – the department where the metaverse tech is being built –  saw a massive operating loss of $4.28 billion, even worse than the $3.99 billion estimate. And there is little hope this number turns positive in the foreseeable future.

Commenting on the quarter, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said “our management theme for 2023 is the ‘Year of Efficiency’ and we’re focused on becoming a stronger and more nimble organization.” That’s a continuation of the “prioritization” and “efficiency” drumbeat we heard in the back half of 2022. First there was the 13% workforce reduction; and he is taking that mindset to the operations (see below on expenses and capex cut).

Zuck is also smart enough to realize he has to start throwing around the term “AI”, which as everyone knows by now, is the new blockchain, to wit: “The progress we’re making on our AI discovery engine and Reels are major drivers of this.”

Looking ahead, the company forecast Q1 revenue of $26 billion to $28.5 billion, with the consensus estimate of $27.25 billion smack in the middle.

For the full year, Meta slashed both its expense and Capex forecast, a move which the market is clearly cheering. Here are the details:

  • Sees total expenses $89 billion to $95 billion, down from the previous guidance of $94 billion to $100 billion, and mostly below the estimate $95.16 billion
  • Sees capital expenditure $30 billion to $33 billion, down from $34 billion to $37 billion, and below the estimate of $34.35 billion

This is important because as Mizuho said earlier, “long only investors still hate the [metaverse] thesis and plan to incinerate money over the next 3 years. [Therefore] buyside feedback all pointing to META to reduce capex range by $1-2B. Feels like $2B is needed for stock to continue to work.” In the end that’s precisely what happened.

The company also announced that its headcount as of Dec 31, 2022 was 86,482, an increase of 20% Y/Y, but that number is about to drop big as it includes a substantial majority of the approximately 11,000 employees impacted by the layoffs META announced in November 2022, who will no longer be reflected in the company’s headcount by the end of the first quarter of 2023.

Some comments from the company on its operating margin:

“Total restructuring charges recorded under our FoA segment were $3.76 billion and RL segment were $440 million during the fourth quarter of 2022. Excluding these charges, our operating margin would have been 13 percentage points higher, our effective tax rate would have been one percentage point lower, and our diluted EPS would have been $1.24 higher for the fourth quarter of 2022.”

“In addition, as previously noted, we continue to monitor developments regarding the viability of transatlantic data transfers and their potential impact on our European operations”

“Our guidance assumes foreign currency will be an approximately 2% headwind to year-over-year total revenue growth in the first quarter, based on current exchange rates.”

But while the earnings were solid, if not stellar, the crushing blow was the company’s announcement that it authorized a whopping $40 billion stock buyback.

We repurchased $6.91 billion and $27.93 billion of our Class A common stock in the fourth quarter and full year 2022, respectively. As of December 31, 2022, we had $10.87 billion available and authorized for repurchases. We also announced today a $40 billion increase in our share repurchase authorization.

Between the solid earnings, the lack of SNAP-like collapse in ad metrics, the forecast slide in expenses and capex and the massive boost to the capex, the heavily shorted META stock is up a whopping 18% and is up more than 100% from its November lows! If gain holds it will be biggest META rise since July 25, 2013

Here is the full META earnings presentation (pdf link).

Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/01/2023 – 16:33

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Bonds, Big-Tech, Bitcoin, & Bullion Blast Off As Dovish Powell Pussys Out

Bonds, Big-Tech, Bitcoin, & Bullion Blast Off As Dovish Powell Pussys Out

Where did the Jackson Hole hellraiser go?

As one market veteran commented, after noting that Fed Chair Powell seemed to refuse to take any bait on the hawkish side, erring dovish on the future with almost every question asked during the presser, “it appears that the Dems got to him after all…”

This sent the terminal rate dovishly lower and sparked a dovish surge in rate-cut expectations (over 50bps of cuts now priced in)…

Source: Bloomberg

With the market now pricing in a capitulative Fed cutting cycle very soon (or as we noted earlier, hiking the odds of a recession-prompted aggressive rate-cut cycle)…

Source: Bloomberg

Or put another way, today’s comments by Jay Powell added 40bps more rate-cuts into the Fed’s cycle through January 2024 (yes that chart shows the market is pricing in rates being 43bps below current levels 12 months from now)…

Source: Bloomberg

Fed Chair Powell started off hawkishly, reiterating that the long lags of monetary policy actions are still to come:

Full effects of rapid tightening have yet to be felt even though the economy “slowed significantly” last year

Fed rates ‘higher for longer’…

“We continue to anticipate that ongoing increases will be appropriate.”

“Restoring price stability will likely require maintaining a restrictive stance for quite some time.”

“We’re talking about a couple of more rate hikes.”

Signaling more ‘pain’ to come…

“The labor market remains extremely tight.”

“The labor market continues to be out of balance.”

“While recent developments are encouraging, we will need substantially more evidence to be confident inflation is on a downward path.”

There are no “grounds for complacency,”

But stocks took off when Powell shrugged off the recent dramatic loosening of financial conditions:

Powell notes that financial conditions have tightened very significantly over the past year, and that “it is important that overall financial conditions reflect” but added that “our focus is not on short-term moves, but on sustained changes” to financial conditions.

Presumably, The Fed is not looking at the same loosening collapse in financial conditions that the market is…

Source: Bloomberg

Bear in mind that financial conditions are easier now than they were when Powell unleashed hell at Jackson Hole.

So with that “unwarranted easing” ignored, the markets went wild on the back of the ‘easy’ Fed attitude.

US equities surged higher as the presser began with Nasdaq leading the charge (up over 2.5%) and the Dow lagging. Some late-day profit-taking (from the 0DTE muppets?) wiped some lipstick off the pig and dragged The Dow to unch for the day

A massive short-squeeze helped…

Source: Bloomberg

And before we leave stock-land, PTON is up 115% YTD…

Source: Bloomberg

Treasuries were aggressively bid with yields plunging, led by the belly (5Y -14bps)…

Source: Bloomberg

The 10Y Yield fell back below 3.40%…

Source: Bloomberg

…back near its lowest since Sept 2022…

Source: Bloomberg

The yield curve flattened back to its most inverted ever…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar tumbled on the dovish presser…

Source: Bloomberg

…to its lowest since April 2022…

Source: Bloomberg

Spot Gold spiked above $1950…

Source: Bloomberg

Its highest since April 2022…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin jumped higher…

Source: Bloomberg

The one thing really didn’t get excited was oil with WTI managing a very small rebound after dumping early on after big builds…

Finally, remember, the world and their pet rabbit is short Treasuries right now

Source: Bloomberg

They will not be pleased with Powell’s pussying-out today…

Tyler Durden
Wed, 02/01/2023 – 16:01

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