Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

New Congressional Bill Would Allow Interstate Marijuana Shipping By USPS To Help Small Growers Compete Against Large Corporations

A pair of Democratic congressional lawmakers have introduced a bill intended to help small marijuana growers compete against large corporations when cannabis is federally legalized—proposing to give them the ability to ship and sell products directly to consumers within and across state lines via the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) and commercial carriers.

The legislation—titled the “Small and Homestead Independent Producers (SHIP) Act—is being sponsored by Reps. Jared Huffman (D-CA) and Val Hoyle (D-OR). It represents a slightly revised version of a measure filed two sessions ago that was not ultimately enacted.

As Congress continues to work toward ending cannabis prohibition, there have been concerns that smaller businesses will struggle to compete against the handful of multi-state operators that have the resources and infrastructure to quickly expand, threatening to further consolidate the market when the federal floodgates finally open.

The SHIP Act is designed to minimize that risk and maximize opportunities for those smaller farmers and producers.

“Larger, commercialized cannabis operators are infiltrating the market and squeezing out our local farmers in the process,” Huffman said in a press release on Tuesday. “So when the antiquated federal prohibition on cannabis finally gets repealed, we need to have substantial legislation ready to help these small businesses survive.”

“My legislation would ensure that folks can ship their products straight to consumers, which would both help expand small businesses and ensure farmers stay afloat,” he said. “When full legalization is guaranteed, we must commit to not leaving our smallest family-farmers behind.”

The proposal has been amended in certain ways compared to the original version, including a new requirement that the Postal Service or “any private or commercial interstate carrier” transporting cannabis must verify that recipients of cannabis products are at least 21 years old.

It also clarifies provisions related to federal preemption of state marijuana laws as it concerns interstate commerce, making it clear that states that prohibit cannabis can continue to do so, except that they can’t prevent the transportation of marijuana across their borders. On the flip side, states with legal marijuana programs would be preempted by federal law “to the extent that such laws restrict the interstate or intrastate shipment of cannabis or a cannabis product directly to an individual with respect to whom the possession of cannabis or a cannabis product is lawful under the laws of the State.”

Finally, the latest version includes a new section that would amend U.S. postal laws by stipulating that the “Postal Service is authorized and directed to permit the transmission in the mails, under regulations to be prescribed by it, of cannabis.”

Keep reading

Democrats’ All-Electric USPS Fleet Sees Each Truck Come With A $6.8 Million Price-Tag

According to a recently published New York Post report, the Biden administration played a major role in the push to massively electrify the United States Postal Service mail truck fleet. From a USPS press release in 2022:

The United States Postal Service today announced that it expects to acquire at least 66,000 battery electric delivery vehicles as part of its 106,000 vehicle acquisition plan for deliveries between now and 2028. The vehicles purchased as part of this anticipated plan will begin to replace the Postal Service’s aging delivery fleet of over 220,000 vehicles.

The Postal Service anticipates at least 60,000 Next Generation Delivery Vehicles (NGDV), of which at least 75% (45,000) will be battery electric.

But, like Buttigieg’s E.V. charging stations, which cost about a billion dollars each, or Kamala Harris’s $42 billion rural internet “flop” that connected a whopping zero rural Americans to the web, or her one-billion-dollar solar panel plan for Puerto Rico which resulted in “only a few” installations), Biden’s “green” USPS plan has been an absolute cluster.

From the Post item:

A Biden administration plan to create a ‘green’ fleet of postal vehicles has churned out a mere 250 electric mail trucks in just over two years — after shelling out taxpayer funds meant to build thousands…

The nearly $10 billion project — which called for more than 35,000 battery-powered US Postal Service (USPS) vehicles to be completed by September 2028 — was funded in part by $3 billion in funding from former President Joe Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

(I suspect the Post item has a typo, because as you see above, the number from the USPS is 45,000, not 35,000.)

So far, the disbursed IRA funds are around $1.7 billion, which means that if Congress is able to claw back the $1.3 billion still allocated for the project, each of these 250 trucks have cost U.S. taxpayers a minimum of $6.8 million a piece—the whole plan was a $10 billion “investment,” so who knows how much else was spent from other sources. Now, “investments” are supposed to give the investors a return on their money, haven’t these financial whizzes heard?

Keep reading

New York Man Arrested After Building and Stashing 7 Bombs on Subway Tracks, Rooftops

A New York man was arrested and charged after building at least seven bombs and stashing them on rooftops and subway tracks.

Michael Gann, 55, was taken into custody last month and on Tuesday was charged by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York.

According to prosecutors, Michael Gann “manufactured at least seven improvised explosive devices (“IEDs”) using precursor chemicals—chemicals that can be combined to create an explosive mixture—that he had ordered on the internet, stored at least five IEDs and shotgun shells on adjoining rooftops of residential apartment buildings in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan, threw at least one IED onto the subway tracks of the Williamsburg Bridge, and subsequently lied to law enforcement about having disposed of his explosives and supplies in a dumpster.”

Gann stored 5 IEDs (pictured below) on the rooftops of residential buildings in SoHo.

Gann tossed one of the IEDs on the subway tracks on the Williamsburg Bridge.

Keep reading

Tulsi Fires Back at Barack Obama, Says She Will be Releasing More Trump-Russia Hoax Docs Tomorrow to Refute Obama’s Statement

ODNI Tulsi Gabbard fired back at Barack Obama on Tuesday afternoon after the former president released a rare statement in response to Trump’s assertion Obama was the ringleader of the Russia hoax.

The office of former President Barack Obama responded to Trump’s assertion that Barack Obama was the “ringleader” of the Russia collusion hoax.

According to a declassified presidential briefing from December 2016, Barack Obama knew the Trump-Russia collusion narrative was a hoax.

Barack Obama knew it was a hoax and he was personally involved in manufacturing and politicizing the intelligence to create the Trump-Russia collusion narrative.

On Tuesday President Trump said Obama is guilty of treason.

“Barack Hussein Obama is the ringleader. Hillary Clinton was right there with him and so was Sleepy Joe Biden… and so were the rest of them. Comey, Clapper, the whole group,” Trump said on Tuesday during remarks to reporters in the Oval Office.

“This was treason…they tried to steal the election…” Trump said.

Keep reading

Maybe AI Isn’t Going To Replace You At Work After All

AI fails at tasks where accuracy must be absolute to create value.

In reviewing the on-going discussions about how many people will be replaced by AI, I find a severe lack of real-world examples. I’m remedying this deficiency with an example of AI’s failure in the kind of high-value work that many anticipate will soon be performed by AI.

Few things in life are more pervasively screechy than hype, which brings us to the current feeding-frenzy of AI hype. Since we all read the same breathless claims and have seen the videos of robots dancing, I’ll cut to the chase: Nobody posts videos of their robot falling off a ladder and crushing the roses because, well, the optics aren’t very warm and fuzzy.

For the same reason, nobody’s sharing the AI tool’s error that forfeited the lawsuit. The only way to really grasp the limits of these tools is to deploy them in the kinds of high-level, high-value work that they’re supposed to be able to do with ease, speed and accuracy, because nobody’s paying real money to watch robots dance or read a copycat AI-generated essay on Yeats that’s tossed moments after being submitted to the professor.

In the real world of value creation, optics don’t count, accuracy counts. Nobody cares if the AI chatbot that churned out the Yeats homework hallucinated mid-stream because nobody’s paying for AI output that has zero scarcity value: an AI-generated class paper, song or video joins 10 million similar copycat papers / songs / videos that nobody pays attention to because they can create their own in 30 seconds.

So let’s examine an actual example of AI being deployed to do the sort of high-level, high-value work that it’s going to need to nail perfectly to replace us all at work. My friend Ian Lind, whom I’ve known for 50 years, is an investigative reporter with an enviably lengthy record of the kind of journalism few have the experience or resources to do. (His blog is www.iLind.net, ian@ilind.net)

The judge’s letter recommending Ian for the award he received from the American Judges Association for distinguished reporting about the Judiciary ran for 18 pages, and that was just a summary of his work.

Ian’s reporting/blogging in the early 2000s inspired me to try my hand at it in 2005.

Keep reading

Her Biggest Scandal Yet! Iran and China Are Circumventing Sanctions via Notorious Bank and Letitia James Is Implicated

The Standard Chartered Bank sanctions evasion case, now in court in the US Second Circuit, found at least $9.6 billion of illegal payments by the bank to Iranian and Hezbollah entities.

The case implicates NYAG Letitia James and the Federal Reserve for ignoring billions of these illicit payments and ignoring Treasury sanctions designations. Maximum Pressure is not being enforced because of the failures of the Fed and the NYAG.

Make sure this case continues.

** Call the Southern District of New York …. Office number: 212-637-2200

At least $9.6 billion of specifically identified illicit payments were made by SCB from its NYC branch to OFAC and known terrorist names. The $9.6 billion was found in internal trade reports turned over by bank whistleblowers and represents the first batch from SCB Dubai office that cleared through SCB NYC. There are estimated over $100 billion more of illegal payments that are more recent and from SCB China where it has 53 mainland branches that facilitate dollar trade payments for oil and war-making materials.

These payments were hidden by SCB from required disclosure in its ongoing Deferred Prosecution Agreement now under the jurisdiction of DCUSA Pirro and SDNY Clayton where both were briefed on SCB after their appointments. There are career blockers at each jurisdiction.

Keep reading

Klaus Schwab Blasts WEF Board, Denies Report He Fudged Data, Racked Up $1.1M In Expenses

The founder of the World Economic Forum is firing back after a bombshell investigation  accused him of cooking economic reports and billing over a million dollars in questionable expenses.

Klaus Schwab, the 87-year-old architect of Davos and the WEF’s global elite gatherings, slammed the organization’s board of trustees on Sunday, accusing them of breaking a confidentiality deal by letting media outlets get wind of the allegations.

“I am in a position to refute all the accusations brought up against me,” Schwab said in a statement after Swiss newspaper SonntagsZeitung detailed preliminary findings from a law firm’s probe.

The investigation, conducted by Swiss law firm Homburger and ordered by the WEF’s own board, reportedly found that Schwab interfered with the forum’s flagship economic rankings to favor political allies and avoid controversy – and submitted 900,000 Swiss francs (about $1.1 million) in expenses that investigators say lacked proper justification.

Three months ago we reported that Schwab was under investigation by the WEF after a whistleblower alleged financial and ethical misconduct by Mr. “eat the bugs” and his wife.

In an anonymous letter from sent to the board of directors by ‘current and former Forum employees,’ Schwab and his wife are accused of commingling their personal affairs with WEF resources without proper oversight, and much more…

Among the most serious allegations:

  • Schwab asked junior employees to withdraw thousands of dollars from ATMs on his behalf and used Forum funds to pay for private, in-room massages at hotels.
  • His wife Hilde, a former Forum employee, scheduled “token” Forum-funded meetings in order to justify luxury holiday travel at the organization’s expense.
  • The letter also raises concerns about how Klaus Schwab treated female employees and how his leadership over decades allegedly allowed instances of sexual harassment and other discriminatory behavior to go unchecked in the workplace

Other allegations include the Schwab family’s use of Villa Mundi – a luxury property bought before the pandemic by the Forum located next to the organization’s Geneva headquarters, which the whistleblower letter maintains that Hilde Schwab maintains tight control over, and which the forum paid $30 million to purchase and another $20 million to renovate – also overseen by Hilde.

Keep reading

VICTORY FOR VOTER INTEGRITY: Federal Judge Tosses Leftist Lawsuit — Delivers Knockout Win in Wyoming’s on Proof of Citizenship Requirement

In a crushing blow to radical left-wing lawyer Marc Elias and his progressive allies, a federal judge has tossed out a lawsuit that sought to gut Wyoming’s new election integrity law.

United States District Court Judge Scott Skavdahl ruled in favor of Secretary of State Chuck Gray and dismissed outright the lawsuit filed by the Equality State Policy Center, which had enlisted notorious Democrat operative Marc Elias in a blatant attempt to strike down House Bill 156—Wyoming’s common-sense requirement that all voter registrants provide proof of U.S. citizenship and state residency.

In his 17-page ruling, Judge Skavdahl SLAMMED the plaintiffs for lacking any standing whatsoever, exposing the entire case as a baseless political attack dressed up as a legal complaint.

“Plaintiff has not adequately demonstrated its standing to sue on its own behalf or on behalf of others in this action,” Skavdahl wrote. “The Court lacks subject matter jurisdiction over this lawsuit, and consequently it must be dismissed.”

The court wrote:

To establish Article III standing to sue, the law requires the plaintiff to show three requirements:
(1) it has suffered an “injury in fact” that is (a) concrete and particularized and (b) actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical; (2) the injury is fairly traceable to the challenged action of the defendant; and (3) it is likely, as opposed to merely speculative, that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision.

Assuming Plaintiffs assertions to be true, they do not establish its standing to bring this lawsuit in its own capacity. Plaintiff has not shown a concrete injury in fact that is fairly traceable to HB 156.

Plaintiffs alleged diversion-of-resources injury is the same type of injury claimed in AllianceforHippocraticMedicine,but the U.S. Supreme Court determined this type of alleged injury was not a concrete injury in fact traceable to the challenged governmental conduct sufficient to satisfy Article III standing.

Keep reading

No Escape From Washington’s Fiscal Doomsday Machine

If you don’t think Washington is in the maws of a Fiscal Doomsday Machine, think again.

And the place to start is with the 30-year CBO projections—expressed as the dollar increase from the current $29 trillion level of publicly held US Treasury debt.

To wit, if Washington does nothing except leave current tax, spending and structural deficit policies in place (i.e. baseline policy), the publicly-held debt will grow by $102 trillion over the next three decades, reaching a staggering 154% of what would be $85 trillion of GDP by 2054.

Moreover, that outcome assumes that Rosy Scenario does not loose her footing for even a moment through the middle of the century. Stated differently, the underlying CBO projections presume that there will be no recession during the 34 year span from 2020 to 2054, and that, in fact, there will be perpetual full-employment at about 4% from here on out.

Of course, during the last 30 years there have been three recessions (shaded area) and no such full-employment perfection was even remotely achieved. The short spells of 4% unemployment or under, in fact, were few and far between—in stark contrast to the CBO baseline which presumes 4% unemployment year after year until 2054.

Keep reading

What Ghislaine Maxwell really knows — and why she could finally spill all on Jeffrey Epstein: sources

Ex-socialite Ghislaine Maxwell will try to cut a deal with federal authorities during a jailhouse meeting with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, sources told The Post.

Blanche said Tuesday he plans to meet with the convicted madam, currently serving a 20-year sentence in Florida for sex-trafficking young women for her former boss, notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

“She’s going to make a deal,” said Alan Dershowitz, a lawyer and law professor who was pals with, and previously represented, Epstein, who died in federal custody in August 2019.

“That’s the way things are done. They make deals with the Mafia, so I’m certain they are going to try to make a deal with her.”

A separate legal expert explained that meeting with Blanche presents an opportunity for Maxwell to potentially lessen her sentence or get out of prison in exchange for spilling secrets about her and Epstein’s life, which she has closely guarded since his death.

Dershowitz has referred to Maxwell, 63, as the “Rosetta Stone” of information about Epstein, and told The Post Tuesday “she knows everything — not just about the perpetrators but the victims. And she knows about the victims who became perpetrators.”

Some of Epstein’s victims — who number over 1,000 in total, according to the Department of Justice — were groomed to recruit other young women, according to court papers.

Keep reading