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.

Congress Blocks School Choice in New Stimulus Package

Governors are prohibited from using emergency education funding to give families more education options, thanks to a new provision inserted in the 5,600-page bill that Congress passed (without having time to read it) on Monday night.

The new stimulus package includes $2.75 billion for the Governors Emergency Education Relief (GEER) fund, a program established by the earlier stimulus bill passed in March, but it comes with new restrictions on how that money can be used. Seemingly in response to the fact that several governors used the first round of GEER funding to launch or expand school choice programs, the new stimulus bill explicitly excludes “vouchers, tuition tax credit programs, education savings accounts, scholarship programs, or tuition assistance programs for elementary and secondary education.”

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Researchers Warn Some Covid-19 Vaccines Could Increase Risk Of HIV Infection

Some of the Covid-19 vaccines currently in development could increase the risk of acquiring HIV, warned a group of researchers in the The Lancet medical journal Monday, potentially leading to an increase in infections as vaccines are rolled out to vulnerable populations around the world. 

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‘This Is Atrocious’: Congress Crams Language to Criminalize Online Streaming, Meme-Sharing Into 5,500-Page Omnibus Bill

Lawmakers in Congress are under fire from digital rights campaigners for embedding three controversial changes to online copyright and trademark laws into the must-pass $2.3 trillion legislative package—which includes a $1.4 trillion omnibus spending bill and a $900 billion Covid-19 relief bill—that could receive floor votes in the House and Senate as early as Monday evening.

The punitive provisions crammed into the enormous bill (pdf), warned Evan Greer of the digital rights group Fight for the Future, “threaten ordinary Internet users with up to $30,000 in fines for engaging in everyday activity such as downloading an image and re-uploading it… [or] sharing memes.”

While the citizenry had almost no time to process the actual contents of the 5,593 page legislative text, Greer said Monday afternoon that the CASE Act, Felony Streaming Act, and Trademark Modernization Act “are in fact included in the must-pass omnibus spending bill.”

As Mike Masnick explained in a piece at TechDirt on Monday:

The CASE Act will supercharge copyright trolling exactly at a time when we need to fix the law to have less trolling. And the felony streaming bill (which was only just revealed last week with no debate or discussion) includes provisions that are so confusing and vague no one is sure if it makes sites like Twitch into felons.

“The fact that these are getting added to the must-pass government funding bill is just bad government,” Masnick added. “And congressional leadership should hear about this.”

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Coronavirus Package Allows Feds to Import More Foreign Workers as 17.8M Americans are Jobless

A spending bill, labeled as a relief package for Americans during the Chinese coronavirus crisis, will allow federal bureaucrats to import more foreign workers to take blue-collar jobs in the United States – even as 17.8 million Americans remain jobless.

A provision slipped into the more than 5,590-page spending bill allows the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Labor Department to import more foreign labor competition against Americans at their discretion.

Specifically, the bill gives DHS the ability to “increase the total number” of H-2B foreign visa workers who can be brought into the U.S. to take blue-collar, nonagricultural jobs that would otherwise go to working class Americans.

DHS Secretaries over the last four years have repeatedly allowed businesses to import more H-2B foreign visa workers above the annual cap of 66,000. Continuation of the policy would come as 24.5 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed. About 17.8 million of those are jobless.

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