AUDIO:

POSSIBLE TOPICS: VOTETEXAS.GOV—Voter Information; REGISTER TO VOTE; APPLY FOR MAIL-IN BALLOT; As METRO Brings Back In-House Bus Service, the Call For More Drivers Goes Out; Houston Planning Commission to recommend changes to proposed housing amendments; Once again, tension builds after state police are deployed to a major Texas city; Two States Have Proposed Bans on Common Food Additives Linked to Health Concerns; The U.S. is On The Brink of a Financial Crisis; Black Americans Should be Concerned; Explainer: Could Biden avert a debt default by using the 14th Amendment?; No Labels is getting on state ballots, drawing a lawsuit and concerns about a spoiler; As AI weaponry enters the arms race, America is feeling very, very afraid; Never Give Artificial Intelligence the Nuclear Codes; More.

Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio) is now on Wednesdays at 11AM (CT) on KPFT FM-HD2, Houston’s Community Station. You can also hear the show:

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Welcome to Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig where we discuss local, state, national, and international stories. My co-host and show editor is Andrew Ferguson.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/EwrSlzZC31w

1. Make sure you are registered to vote! VoteTexas.GOV – Texas Voter Information
   1. It’s time to snail-mail (no emails or faxes) in your application for mail-ballots, IF you qualify TEXAS SoS VOTE-BY-MAIL BALLOT APPLICATION (ALL TEXAS COUNTIES) HarrisVotes.com­ – Countywide Voting Centers, (Election Information Line (713) 755-6965), Harris County Clerk
   2. Obtain a Voter Registration Application (HarrisVotes.com)
   3. Harris County “Vote-By-Mail’ Application for 2022

 

1. Austin County Elections
2. Brazoria County (TX) Clerk Election Information
   1. 1. Chambers County (TX) Elections
      2. Colorado County (TX) Elections
      3. Fort Bend County takes you to the proper link
      4. org (Galveston County, TX)
      5. Harris County (com)
      6. LibertyElections (Liberty County, TX)
      7. Montgomery County (TX) Elections
      8. Walker County Elections
      9. Waller County (TX) Elections
      10. Wharton County County Elections
   2. For personalized, nonpartisan voter guides and information, Consider visiting Vote.ORG.   Ballotpedia.com and Texas League of Women Voters are also good places to get election info.
   3. If you are denied your right to vote any place at any time at any polling place for any reason, ask for (or demand) a provisional ballot rather than lose your vote.
   4. HarrisVotes.com – Countywide Voting Centers, HARRIS COUNTY – IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED FOR VOTING: Do not possess and cannot reasonably obtain one of these IDs?
      1. Fill out a declaration at the polls describing a reasonable impediment to obtaining it, and show a copy or original of one of the following supporting forms of ID:
      2. A government document that shows your name and an address, including your voter registration certificate
      3. Current utility bill
      4. Bank statement
      5. Government check
      6. Paycheck
      7. A certified domestic (from a U.S. state or territory) birth certificate or (b) a document confirming birth admissible in a court of law which establishes your identity (which may include a foreign birth document)
      8. You may vote early by-mail if:You are registered to vote and meet one of the following criteria:
         1. Away from the county of residence on Election Day and during the early voting period;
         2. Sick or disabled;
         3. 65 years of age or older on Election Day; or
         4. Confined in jail, but eligible to vote.
         5. Make sure you are registered:
         6. Ann Harris Bennett, Tax Assessor-Collector & Voter Registrar
         7. CHECK REGISTRATION STATUS HERE
         8. CLICK How to register to vote in Texas
         9. Outside Texas, try Vote.org.
3. BE REGISTERED TO VOTE, and if eligible, REMEMBER TO FILL OUT AND MAIL NEW MAIL-IN BALLOT APPLICATIONS FOR 2023.
   1. Obtain a Voter Registration Application (HarrisVotes.com)
   2. FYI: The next elections according to HarrisVotes.com are May 9^th. Last day to early vote is May 6. There may or not be an election in your particular election precinct, so you may have to go to your local elections clerk or go to http://www.VOTETEXAS.GOV
   3. Just be registered and apply for your mail-in ballot if you may qualify.
   4. You can track your Mail Ballot Activity from our website with direct link provided here https://www.harrisvotes.com/Tracking
4. As METRO Brings Back In-House Bus Service, the Call For More Drivers Goes Out; Faith Bugenhagen | HOUSTONPRESS.COM | May 2, 2023, 4:30AM
   1. After reaching a low of 1,357 bus operators during the height of the pandemic, the greater-Houston area transit system METRO is leaning on incentive payments and provided-training to attract new operators for their Park & Ride express bus services.
   2. Despite extending two existing contracts with AFC Transportation and First Class Transportation, two companies that provided bus operators when the transit system needed them – METRO does not plan on renewing them after their termination date in September, said Tracy Jackson, Deputy Chief of Communications for METRO.
   3. METRO’s Park & Ride services will be back in-house by then, due to the increase in hiring over the past couple of months. … They hired 35 additional bus operators to make up for the 20 AFC and 19 First Class operators that were used since March 2022, Jackson said. …
   4. After September, Jackson said all buses and bus operators that are a part of METRO’s Park & Ride will be operated by METRO staff. …
   5. … METRO is providing continued hiring and retention incentive payments for both bus operators and mechanics. These employees will also have access to resources to receive training while actively working with the transit system.
   6. Those who are interested in working as a mechanic, can learn on the job as METRO partnered with several mechanic schools. Although the transit system currently has enough mechanics to keep up with demand of their operations, they are always looking to hire more as they continue to expand future services since recovering from the pandemic, Jackson said.
   7. Those who opt to be bus operators can get their commercial license also while at METRO, the only requirement for operators is to be older than 18 and have a valid regular driver’s license.
   8. For hiring, new bus operators are allotted up to $4,000 and for new mechanics – depending on their skill level – they can be given up to $8,000. The retention pay for union and non-union full-time employees is $6,000, according to Jackson.
   9. METRO continues to provide these incentive payments as they still have routine needs for new hires, such as replacing roles of employees that are retiring or advancing to another higher position internally. …
   10. ANDREW: More support for public transit is always welcome, but my main takeaway is those driver positions look awfully tempting. It sounds like a pretty good job, sitting in an air-conditioned bus most of the day, providing an important service, and the starting pay is apparently over $20 an hour before any incentives. I don’t have a CDL, but METRO pays for new hires to get that. I do, however, worry about sticking to a schedule (I think I might be too cautious of a driver for that) and the possibility of screwing up and putting someone in danger (I find city driving complicated and kind of stressful). Hmm. Maybe I’ll see what office jobs they have.
5. Houston Planning Commission to recommend changes to proposed housing amendments; By Leah Foreman | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | 2:35 PM Apr 28, 2023 CDT, Updated 2:35 PM Apr 28, 2023 CDT
   1. The city of Houston’s Planning and Development Department is considering changes to the city’s code of ordinances that would allow for more types of housing—often referred to by city planners as the “missing middle housing”—as well as decreased parking requirements for residents within a certain walking distance from public transit options.
   2. If approved by Houston City Council, these changes—which come from the city’s Livable Places committee—would allow market-based parking in an effort to decrease the number of parking spaces for residences within a quarter-mile of public transit. They would also provide new rules to encourage the development of four types of housing: second dwelling units, multiunit residential projects, courtyard-style developments and narrow lot developments.
   3. After a series of presentations to the public throughout April, the proposed amendments and public feedback received about them were presented to the planning commission before a public hearing at its meeting April 27.
   4. … [Dipti Mathur, division manager at planning and development,] said that the Livable Places website [MIKE: Link added by me.] has seen 5,400 visitors, and some of the public presentations attracted more than over 200 attendees. She said they went to about 14 different organizations and made eight presentations in total. …
   5. According to Mathur, Livable Places surveyed 400 citizens about the proposed changes and, of those respondents, about 41% were renters, 26% go to work without taking a car, and 46% would choose to save money on housing if it meant one or zero parking spaces. Of the housing options suggested, Mathur said 67% of respondents support garage apartments, while 59% support courtyard-style development.
   6. [Suvidha Bandi, a project manager with planning and development,] said her team has gotten over 300 comments on the Livable Places website and are still analyzing them.
   7. The following are suggestions from the community, per Bandi:
   8. Consider a size limit, somewhere between 1,500 square feet and 1,800 square feet, for a second dwelling unit;
   9. Changes to multiunit residential requirements: project should have up to four units on all streets and up to five to eight units along major thoroughfares and collector streets; and one parking space per unit of 1,000 square feet or less;
   10. Change guest parking requirements from one guest space for every six units to one guest space for every four units; and
   11. Reducing the distance required from certain transit options for an area to be considered for market-based parking requirements: Livable Places is considering reducing the buffer to a quarter-mile for high-frequency bus stops and Blue Route stops that overlap with Opportunity Zones and census tracts with 25% or higher zero car ownership. This is a decrease from a half-mile distance from transit stations and high-frequency bus stops.
   12. Several people affiliated with the Greater Houston Builders Association, including President Mike Dishberger, spoke out against the changes.
   13. “I would ask each of you to look at the Livable Places website and see the mission of the committee,” Dishberger said to the committee. “It was to provide more types of building for missing middle homes, make [accessory dwelling units] easier to build, increase home type options, improve safety for pedestrians and cyclists, and reduce parking requirements. I’m not seeing anywhere where our mission was to make it harder to build on narrow lots, force the use of alleys and increase the setbacks to the garage.”
   14. Ginger Baldwin, a resident of Sunset Heights, said she saw benefits to the ideas presented.
   15. “Cars are constantly blocking off my sidewalks,” Baldwin said. “So there’s little street parking for my friends and family to utilize, and this doesn’t even mention the concrete used instead of green spaces, which are prone for flooding environmental factors.”
   16. Austin Pooley, vice president of New Liberals of Houston, said he was “disappointed” in the revisions, which he said cut back on the amount of market-based parking.
   17. “I would like to see market-based parking expanded to cover the entire city of Houston, not be reduced in the way that has been recommended here,” Pooley said. “We should really be encouraging market-based parking so that, for the future of my kids, we can move towards a Houston where we don’t have to use cars as transportation, where in the future—when we have better transportation options, more transportation options—we can reduce the parking steadily over time.”
   18. Officials with Livable Places are encouraging the public to reach out and provide comments on the proposed amendments by emailing livableplaces@houstontx.gov.
   19. On May 11, the planning commission will reconvene and present its recommendations to the planning and development department based on continued public feedback.
   20. MIKE: I didn’t see a decent explanation of what “Market-based Parking” would be in practice, so I dug into the links. Existing examples are described as “Central Business District (CBD) downtown area and small portions of east downtown [EaDo] and Midtown”. I would define this more bluntly as, the places where there are pay-to-park garages and lots, or you’re out of luck.
   21. MIKE: A frequent concern of neighborhood residents, and one that often materializes, is what happens when “market-based parking leads to business overflow parking in neighborhoods? I see many examples of this in the Heights neighborhoods. The group’s answer to that is parking permits for residents. It doesn’t answer the question of, How do I keep the city from towing my guests’ cars?
   22. MIKE: My view is that businesses should be required to have enough parking, rather than putting the responsibility and hassle of solutions on adjacent neighborhoods.
   23. MIKE: The explanatory video that can be found on the Livable Places web site is interesting and mitigates some of my concerns about the housing suggestions, but I don’t think it’s entirely realistic in terms of how a neighborhood organically develops over time, and then evolves and regenerates as generations change. It seems a mostly rose-colored idea of how a neighborhood will actually function from people who mostly don’t have to worry about parking problems.
   24. MIKE: One phrase that came to mind when I read that cars might have to move during school hours was, “If you enjoyed owning a car in Brooklyn with ‘alternate side of the street parking,’ you’ll love some of these new concepts.”
   25. MIKE: The “quad unit” housing concept reminded me of the student housing you often find near Texas A&M in College Station, but not in a bad way. In College Station, there are four living units to a structure with parking in front. Using a parking alley in back could certainly make for more attractive housing from the street view or common area perspective, but it also consumes more land to accommodate entry and exit from rear parking.
   26. MIKE: Maybe we need a new paradigm between a car-centric city or a walkable city. How about a golf-cartable city? Perfect for short hops and take less than half the footprint of a car. Let’s think about this from a new perspective.
   27. MIKE: Overall, I think there are some good ideas here, but I have enough pragmatic concerns to consider it very much a work-in-progress.
   28. ANDREW: I think reducing the amount of parking in the city before expanding the reach and frequency of public transit is putting the cart before the horse. I think plenty of people are willing to use public transit in Houston, but it’s not accessible enough or can’t get them where they want to go. Speaking for myself, I would love to use METRO to get to KPFT every week, but Pearland and 288 South in general seems to be a total no-go zone for bus stops and Park and Ride lots. The point about getting more green space is well taken, but I think the best way to reduce demand for parking is to expand METRO’s usefulness. Then we can talk about reclaiming some land.
   29. REFERENCE: Market-Based Parking – Frequently Asked Questions (PDF)—GOV
       1. What is Market-Based Parking? Market-Based Parking (MBP) describes an area that is exempt from the City’s off-street parking regulations. That is, the City doesn’t require property owners to provide a minimum amount of parking for their businesses. Instead, MBP allows property owners to determine how much parking is needed to service their customers and provide that amount.
       2. Does this already exist anywhere in Houston? Currently, the only area in Houston that is exempt from the off-street parking regulations is the Central Business District (CBD) downtown area and small portions of east downtown and Midtown. The current boundaries are I-10 East to the north, McGowen Street to the south, Emancipation Avenue to the east, and I-45 South/Bagby Street to the west.
       3. What is the City doing to encourage other forms of transportation? The Planning Department is working closely with METRO on their METRONext Plan. …
       4. How can neighborhoods protect their streets from being overrun with additional business-related parking? The City’s Parking Management Division offers a program for neighborhoods to limit spill-over parking. For more information, go to: https://www.houstontx.gov/parking/resparkingpermits.html …
6. Once again, tension builds after state police are deployed to a major Texas city; by Jolie McCullough | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | May 2, 2023, 9 hours ago
   1. Similar to tensions Dallas faced four years ago, Austin officials are struggling between two conflicting results of inviting the state’s law enforcement agency to patrol their city streets.
   2. Violent crime has dropped, but some Black and Latino residents say they feel under attack by the state troopers who largely set up shop in their neighborhoods.
   3. In late March, local and state leaders requested that the Texas Department of Public Safety help the Austin Police Department as it grappled with short staffing and long response times to 911 calls. Police departments nationwide, including DPS, are finding it difficult to fill their ranks as retirements surge and new recruits are harder to find.
   4. Almost immediately after troopers hit the streets, city officials this month began celebrating a drop in violent crime, most recently reporting that such crimes have been well below averages in each of the four weeks DPS has been embedded in Austin. But soon after came concerns of racial profiling and overpolicing in Black and Latino neighborhoods. …
   5. … Travis County Attorney’s Office released statistics showing that nearly 90% of those arrested by DPS on misdemeanor charges since March 30 were Black or Latino. As of Saturday, the office reported that nearly two-thirds of misdemeanor arrestees were Latino and almost a quarter were Black. Most charges were for drunk driving or low-level drug possession cases, including marijuana, which local officials do not typically prosecute.
   6. On Tuesday, DPS released a racial breakdown of its traffic stops showing Hispanic drivers are being arrested and stopped at rates disproportionate to the city’s population — accounting for 54% of all stops in the last month.
   7. Austin’s population is 33% Hispanic and 8% Black, according to S. Census estimates. …
   8. The pattern is almost identical to the one Dallas City Council members and residents saw in 2019, when Gov. Greg Abbott sent DPS into the city to address a sudden spike in homicides. Though there were significant drops reported in violent crime, many Black and Latino residents felt harassed, saying troopers would pull them over for almost-expired vehicle tags or to question their immigration status.
   9. “It appears to be a mirror image of what was done in Dallas and ultimately what led to a lot of people in that community — including local officials — demanding that DPS leave,” Chris Harris, policy director for the Austin Justice Coalition, said about the city’s partnership with DPS. “I think we’re getting close to that point here.” …
   10. At the request of [Austin PD], DPS has largely been patrolling predominantly Latino neighborhoods, state and local officials said Tuesday. Police leaders said the areas were chosen because they have the highest crime rates and highest number of 911 emergency calls. [DPS Director Steve McCraw] said that explains the high number of arrests and stops of Hispanic drivers, saying that it’s misleading to compare the DPS enforcement data to citywide demographics.
   11. MIKE: As is often the case in Tribune articles, there’s a lot more in-depth reporting in this article. This is just a taste.
   12. MIKE: There seems, as is often the case, an element of “seek and ye shall find” in these trooper deployments. Deploy police in minority neighborhoods and you get an abundance of minority traffic stops and arrests for minor offenses. Because after all, the cops deployed in an area have to show that they were doing something to justify their work hours.
   13. MIKE: The story says, “Police leaders said the areas were chosen because they have the highest crime rates and highest number of 911 emergency calls.” I’m starting to feel that this is a “raw statistics” problem. Maybe analysts need to dig deeper into what these 911 calls are about and what the police actually find when they respond. Maybe the “crime rates” are more a result of statistical bias caused by the bias of the data inputs.
   14. MIKE: And of course, we keep coming back to police training, officer attitudes, cop culture, and the personalities and innate biases of some of the people attracted to the job of policing.
   15. MIKE: There are problems here that need “outside the box” examination to understand them and deal with them.
   16. ANDREW: Yeah, and just calling in more police is about as inside the box as you can get.
7. Two States Have Proposed Bans on Common Food Additives Linked to Health Concerns; Here’s what to know about the five chemicals, which most often show up in baked goods, candy and soda. By Dana G. Smith | NYTIMES.COM | April 13, 2023
   1. Newly proposed bills in California and New York are putting food additives to [that] act as preservatives or to enhance color, texture or taste — under the microscope.
   2. The [goal is] to prohibit the manufacturing and sale of products containing additives that have been linked to cancer, neurodevelopmental issues and hormone dysfunction. The five additives named in the bills are most commonly found in baked goods, candy and soda, and are almost totally banned in food products in Europe. Several health associations, including the Endocrine Society and the American Academy of Pediatrics, have raised concerns about the potential health harms of food additives as a whole.
   3. The bills, if approved, would both go into effect in 2025. The sponsors of the California bill … said the restrictions would especially protect children, who are more susceptible than adults to the potential risks. …
   4. When deciding which to include, the state legislators, collaborating with the nonprofits Consumer Reports and the Environmental Working Group, looked for additives that were prohibited in Europe and still widely used in the U.S., and where research showed strong evidence of health risks.
   5. “These five were truly the worst of the worst,” said Scott Faber, senior vice president of government affairs at the Environmental Working Group.
   6. Red dye No. 3 is used in nearly 3,000 food products, including icings, nutritional shakes, maraschino cherries and peppermint-, berry- and cherry-flavored candies. It has been shown to cause cancer in animals, which prompted the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to ban its use in cosmetics in 1990. …
   7. Titanium dioxide acts as a whitener, color enhancer and anti-caking agent in thousands of food items. It’s present in many candies, as well as baked goods, creamy salad dressings and frozen dairy products, like cheese pizza and ice cream. A safety assessment conducted by the European Food Safety Authority in 2021 concluded that titanium dioxide damages DNA and can harm the immune system, resulting in its ban in the E.U. in 2022.
   8. Brominated vegetable oil serves as an emulsifier in fruit drinks and sodas. Research in rats — including a study published by the F.D.A. in 2022 — suggests that brominated vegetable oil acts as an endocrine disrupter, especially affecting the thyroid hormone. An earlier study found that it can also harm the reproductive system. Because of its potential risks, many large brands, including Coca-Cola and Pepsi, recently stopped using the chemical, but it’s still in some smaller and grocery store beverage brands.
   9. Potassium bromate is primarily found in baked goods, including breads, cookies and tortillas, where it acts as a leavening agent and improves texture. The additive is classified as being “possibly carcinogenic to humans” by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, based on studies conducted in animals.
   10. Propylparaben is a preservative used in packaged baked goods, particularly pastries and tortillas. It’s also present in many cosmetics and personal care products. Numerous studies, in humans and animals, indicate that propylparaben acts as an endocrine disrupter and affects male and female reproductive health. …
   11. In response to the California bill, which was released ahead of New York’s, a coalition of food industry companies wrote an opposition letter stating that, “All five of these additives have been thoroughly reviewed by the federal and state systems and many international scientific bodies and continue to be deemed safe.” A spokesman for the National Confectioners Association, a trade organization that represents candy manufacturers, echoed this in an email to The Times, saying their members adhere to F.D.A. guidelines.
   12. An F.D.A. official wrote in an email to The Times that the agency evaluates food additives based on a number of factors, including the “amount expected to be consumed (dietary exposure)” and “laboratory studies supporting safety.”
   13. In practice, however, many chemicals are approved under a provision known as Generally Recognized As Safe [GRAS], which states that a food additive can forego review by the F.D.A. if it has been deemed safe by “qualified experts.” …
   14. One point of contention is that the vast majority of the research on these additives has been done in animals because it is difficult (and unethical) to conduct toxicology research in humans. …
   15. The best way to steer clear of potentially hazardous food additives is to avoid eating prepared, processed foods and instead stick to fresh ingredients. If you are buying something packaged, be sure to read labels. [Dr. Sheela Sathyanarayana, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington] said a good rule of thumb is to opt for foods with short ingredient lists and to skip foods with ingredients you can’t pronounce. She mentioned the preservatives butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) and butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite, and meat with bovine growth hormone as other chemicals to try to avoid.
   16. According to the Environmental Working Group, over the past few years, several food manufacturers and grocery store chains have stopped using or selling products containing some or all of these additives. All five of the additives have chemical substitutes that serve the same purpose and have been deemed to be safer for human consumption — but they’re more expensive. If the bills are passed, it could motivate more brands to follow suit because it might not be economically prudent to produce one batch of products for California and New York and another for the rest of the U.S.
   17. Some experts say the bills don’t go far enough. Instead, they say a complete overhaul of the F.D.A.’s review process is necessary. …
   18. … Mr. Faber called the Generally Recognized As Safe [GRAS] review process a “loophole” that should be closed, saying that many of the outside experts who do the reviews are employed by the chemical companies that manufacture the additives.
   19. “Consumers can certainly read labels and avoid these chemicals, but it shouldn’t be up to consumers to keep us safe,” he said. “We have an F.D.A. that was charged in 1958 to ensure the safety of these food chemicals, and the F.D.A. has let us down.”
   20. ANDREW: Yeah, the GRAS process definitely needs to be cut and everything approved with it re-reviewed under the standard process, if not also taking the opportunity to make the standard review process more stringent. But California and New York can’t do that alone, and these bills are something that these state governments can do. I think some states have their own food safety regulators that are more rigorous than the federal FDA, and more states should consider setting that up for themselves.
   21. ANDREW: As for these specific chemicals, this all sounds perfectly justified to me. I’m not panicking if these chemicals stay in consumer products, as it seems to me like the risks from the additives are all slight, but it’s not a bad idea to push companies to reduce risks to consumers as much as possible without compromising the utility of the product. And the fact that Europe has a lot of the same products as the US without these additives suggests that we’ll be fine without them.
   22. ANDREW: I see few downsides for the consumer here, and I think the potential costs are reasonable.
   23. MIKE: Some of these additives have been “grandfathered” to a time before Teddy Roosevelt’s FDA even existed. Many of those grandfathered additives have not been subjected to the rigorous tests that new ones require, and there is no economic incentive to do so. However, some of them have been shown as possibly harmful in small experiments. In many ways, we really still have no idea what we are eating, even if we read labels carefully.
8. The U.S. is On The Brink of a Financial Crisis; Black Americans Should be Concerned; The U.S. Treasury Secretary said that U.S. could run out of money as soon as June 1st. Here’s why Black Americans should care. By Jessica Washington | THEROOT.COM | MAY 2, 2023, Published 3 hours ago
   1. … [T]he United States has never defaulted on [its] loans, but that will happen if we don’t raise the debt limit. It’s not so different from when a regular person defaults on their loans, only on a much bigger and more complex scale. [The country’s] rating would fall, potentially triggering a deep recession. And because the global economy is so intimately tied to our economy, if we default, we risk not only plunging ourselves into a severe recession; but we could also tank the global economy.
   2. Why Should Black People Care What Happens With the Debt Limit? —Unfortunately, this isn’t the kind of crisis Black Americans can afford to ignore. A deep recession would, in all likelihood, be devastating for Black Americans. Studies have shownthat Black Americans are generally among the first groups to be laid off when unemployment is high and the slowest demographic to recover after a recession.
   3. Black Americans would also be disproportionately harmed if the government can no longer fully fund social welfare programs, including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Just take Social Security, for example. A 2017 study found that 35 percent of elderly married Black couples and 58 percent of unmarried Black older adults relied on Social Security for 90 percent or more of their income.…
   4. House Republicans recently passed a bill to raise the debt limit. However, they included a bunch of spending cuts and new work requirements for people receiving government benefits, including food programs such as SNAP. The bill is unlikely to go anywhere since President Joe Biden is currently pushing for Congress to raise the limit without extracting any concessions.
   5. However, there is still hope that we can avoid a crisis point in the next few weeks. On Tuesday, House Democrats led by Representative Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) enacted a plan to try to force Republicans to raise the debt limit. Democrats plan to use an [arcane] procedural process known as a “discharge petition,” which would allow them to get around Republican opposition to raising the debt limit without spending cuts. …
   6. The measure is undeniably a long shot, but with the threat of economic disaster mere weeks away, a Hail Mary pass is better than nothing.
   7. Explainer: Could Biden avert a debt default by using the 14th Amendment?; By Andy Sullivan and Jacqueline Thomsen | REUTERS.COM | May 2, 2023, 10:04 AM CDT, Last Updated 6 hours ago
      1. The divided U.S. Congress is running out of time to raise the federal government’s $31.4 trillion debt ceiling, with the Treasury Department warning it could be unable to pay its bills as soon as June 1.
      2. If Congress fails to act, some legal experts say Democratic President Joe Biden has another option to avert a crisis: Invoke the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to ensure the United States can continue to pay its bills.
      3. Section Four of 14th Amendment, adopted after the 1861-1865 Civil War, states that the “validity of the public debt of the United States … shall not be questioned.”
      4. Historians say that aimed to ensure the federal government would not repudiate its debts, as some former Confederate states had done.
      5. But the clause has been largely unaddressed by the courts, and legal experts disagree about what it requires from Congress and the presidency.
      6. Some, like Cornell University law professor Michael Dorf, say the “least unconstitutional” option would be for Biden to act on his own to protect the integrity of the national debt. … Any action by Biden would surely prompt a lawsuit.
      7. It’s not clear who could bring a case. It could be difficult for any plaintiff to prove they had been harmed by the action — a legal concept known as “standing.”
      8. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that individual lawmakers do not have standing to file such lawsuits, but Congress could potentially vote to say that it had been collectively harmed. …
      9. Any case would be in uncharted legal territory. … Biden and Congress, meanwhile, would be under tremendous pressure to resolve the issue quickly — meaning any case might be irrelevant before it reaches the court.
      10. The last time this was a front-burner issue in Washington in 2011 and 2013, prominent Democrats like former President Bill Clinton urged then-President Barack Obama to invoke the 14th Amendment. But White House aides said they did not believe they had the legal authority to do so.
      11. [Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen] said in 2021 that invoking the 14th Amendment was not an option, and some of those former Obama aides, like Gene Sperling, now work in Biden’s White House. …
      12. Administration officials and economists have warned that a default triggered by a debt-ceiling breach would roil the world financial system and plunge the United States into recession.
      13. That immediate catastrophe might be avoided if Biden invoked the 14th Amendment.
      14. But investors nevertheless could be spooked by the drama and demand higher interest rates to reflect the increased risk while the legal issues played out.
      15. [Said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics,] “That’s a pretty significant gamble on the part of the president. But that’s probably his best option if you get into that scenario.”
   8. MIKE: Playing “Chicken” with the debt ceiling had never been much of a “thing” until Senator Mitch McConnell started doing it with President Obama; kind of like filibusters had never been much of a thing until Mitch McConnell started doing it to President Obama.
   9. MIKE: Maybe now it’s past time to test the Constitutionality of the “Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917” — colloquially known as the debt ceiling — in court to put this dangerous fiscal game to rest once and for all.
   10. ANDREW:  I agree entirely. The question is, will Biden have the backbone to try it if the House’s strategy doesn’t work? I also think it’s important that there are articles discussing the excessive impact a national debt default would have on Black people. Some people undoubtedly roll their eyes at talking about this issue through the lens of race, but we need to acknowledge unfair circumstances if we’re going to have any hope of making them fairer. And we can and should make them fairer.
9. No Labels is getting on state ballots, drawing a lawsuit and concerns about a spoiler; By Ben Giles | NPR.ORG | April 26, 2023, 5:00 AM ET
   1. The centrist political group No Labels is getting on the ballot in individual states, causing consternation among members of the major political parties about the organization’s endgame.
   2. The group says it’s not interested in running a presidential campaign. Nonetheless, the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit is committed to raising roughly $70 million to gather signatures and qualify for the ballot in 2024.
   3. “We’re going for as many states as we can across the country,” Ryan Clancy, lead strategist for No Labels, said in an interview.
   4. So far, No Labels has gained access to the ballot in Arizona, Colorado, Alaska and Oregon.
   5. In Arizona, rumors persisted that No Labels could offer Democrat-turned-independentS. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema a new platform for her seat.
   6. But Clancy insists that No Labels is a one-ticket operation — a presidential “insurance project” for dissatisfied Republicans and Democrats. …
   7. That’s left Republicans and Democrats alike concerned that No Labels could tee up a spoiler [in a presidential election.]
   8. Democratic voices, in particular, have warned that a third-party bid would help elect Trump to another term.
   9. In an online FAQ, No Labels says it’s “too early to know” whether a Biden-Trump rematch would lead the group to nominate a so-called “unity ticket.” No Labels says it will rely on “rigorously analyzed polling data” to determine whether most Americans “want an alternative to the major party presidential nominees,” and whether the group sees “a viable path” to winning election.
   10. But for now, Clancy says No Labels is committed to facilitating the infrastructure for that ticket, just in case. …
   11. The secretary of state in Arizona now refers to No Labels in legal documents as the No Labels Party — a label that the organization rejects.
   12. “We’re not a political party. We’ve never claimed to be one,” Clancy said, describing No Labels more as the facilitator of someone else’s potential candidacy.
   13. Legally, it’s an important distinction.
   14. Political parties and committees trying to influence the outcome of an election have to follow certain rules, like abiding by contribution limits and disclosing expenses. No Labels is a registered nonprofit, so it’s not required to disclose where its funding comes from.
   15. [A]ttorney Roy Herrera, [is] suing No Labels on behalf of the Arizona Democratic Party, which wants to bar the organization from the ballot. …
   16. Democrats acknowledge in their lawsuit that No Labels is a nonprofit corporation; instead, their case hinges on a technicality in how the group gathered enough signatures to qualify for the Arizona ballot. …
   17. Eric Spencer, a former Arizona state elections director, said he assumed those signatures were paid for, and if so, that would raise potential financial issues for him. He says state rules make it clear that if No Labels paid money to gather them, the group should’ve registered as a political action committee even before it gained ballot access in Arizona. …
   18. Federally, No Labels exists in something of a gray area.
   19. To the Federal Election Commission, No Labels doesn’t yet have to register as a political party thanks to a 15-year-old court case dealing with a previous third-party contender.
   20. Adav Noti argued the losing end of the case for the FEC. …
   21. “The court allowed an organization in sort of similar circumstances to go forward without being subjected to contribution limits or disclosure,” Noti said. “And so that’s what No Labels is availing itself of now, sort of as we predicted at the time.”
   22. That allows No Labels to operate as what Noti calls the “epitome” of a dark money group. …
   23. As for No Labels, they’re not talking about their finances.
   24. Online, they claim to have donors from across the country, but say they won’t share the names because “agitators and partisan operatives” would try to attack their individual supporters.
   25. The organization did not respond to a follow-up question about whether it has an obligation to voters to disclose its donors.
   26. ANDREW: First off, No Labels should absolutely have to register as a political action committee. They’re raising funds to materially contribute to a political candidate. That’s what a PAC does. The fact that No Labels doesn’t know what candidate they’re going to support yet, if any, doesn’t change anything.
   27. ANDREW: Secondly, if they are a “dark money” group, I suspect someone would have co-opted their group for that purpose. They’ve mostly focused on advocating for centrist policies and bipartisanship in Congress up to this point. They were a driving force behind the Problem Solvers Caucus in the House of Representatives. This doesn’t sound to me like a group that popped up six months ago and started trying to influence the next election. But as I said, that doesn’t mean they aren’t being co-opted by a major party or a prospective major party candidate.
   28. ANDREW: Thirdly, I don’t personally like them. I read them as very smugly centrist, and their whole defense against the spoiler argument is “but we’re so bland, everybody will like us!” (I’m paraphrasing.) Not exactly a spirited defense of independent politics (I’ve linked a couple of better ones on the blog at com). They haven’t yet announced their actual so-called “commonsense” policy positions, but I don’t anticipate it appealing to anyone but the most blissfully ignorant, easily-swayed voters in the country, and I hope for all our sakes, that’s a very slim percentage of the population.
   29. ANDREW: But absolutely none of this means they shouldn’t be allowed to do what they’re doing. Every citizen in the United States is supposed to have a voice in choosing who runs the country. But those voices don’t mean much if there isn’t a meaningful choice. Sure, “meaningful” is relative. But it gets easier to argue that the choice is meaningful the more options there are. If voters don’t consider their choices meaningful, they don’t tend to vote, and it’s hard to argue that the people gave you a mandate to rule if most of those people couldn’t even bother to show up.
   30. MIKE: I don’t think I could have said most of that better myself. In fact, I didn’t. But relative to your comments, Andrew, I take a different view of how they should be categorized for legal election purposes: They’re not calling themselves a PAC, exactly. They’re trying to get on State ballots; this is what political parties do, not PACs. So, they are playing fast and loose with election law, and they are a sleazy dark money group that wants to have it all their way, without even saying exactly what their way is. I neither like them nor trust them. I think they plan to be a “front” for someone.
10. As AI weaponry enters the arms race, America is feeling very, very afraid; Will technological advantages be enough for China to replace the US as the world’s AI superpower? By John Naughton, Opinion | THEGUARDIAN.COM | Sat 8 Apr 2023 11.00 EDT, Last modified on Sat 8 Apr 2023 14.28 EDT
    1. The Bible maintains that “the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong”, but, as Damon Runyon used to say, “that is the way to bet”. …
    2. In recent times, a new kind of weaponry – loosely called “AI” – has entered the race. In 2021, we belatedly discovered how worried the US government was about it. A National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence was convened under the chairmanship of Eric Schmidt, the former chair of Google. In its report, issued in March of that year, the commission warned: that China could soon replace the US as the world’s “AI superpower”; that AI systems will be used (surprise, surprise!) in the “pursuit of power”; and that “AI will not stay in the domain of superpowers or the realm of science fiction”. It also urged President Biden to reject calls for a global ban on highly controversial AI-powered autonomous weapons, saying that China and Russia were unlikely to keep to any treaty they signed.
    3. It was the strongest indication to date of the hegemonic anxiety gripping the US in the face of growing Chinese assertiveness on the global stage. It also explains why an open letter signed by many researchers calling on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least six months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4 … fell on closed ears in Washington and Silicon Valley. …
    4. The well-meaning but futile “pause” letter was motivated by fears that machine-learning technology had crossed a significant threshold on the path to AGI (artificial general intelligence), i.e., superintelligent machines. This is only plausible if you believe – as some in the machine-learning world do – that massive expansion of LLMs (large language models) will eventually get us to AGI. And if that were to happen (so the panicky reasoning goes), it might be bad news for humanity …
    5. For the foreign-policy establishment in Washington, though, the prospect that China might get to AGI before the US looks like an existential threat to American hegemony. The local tech giants who dominate the technology assiduously fan these existential fears. And so the world could be faced with a new “arms race” fuelled by future generations of the technology that brought us ChatGPT, with all the waste and corruption that such spending sprees bring in their wake.
    6. This line of thinking is based on two pillars that look pretty shaky. The first is an article of faith; the second is a misconception about the nature of technological competition. The article of faith is a belief that accelerated expansion of machine-learning technology will eventually produce AGI. This looks like a pretty heroic assumption. As the philosopher Kenneth A Taylor pointed out before his untimely death, artificial intelligence research comes in two flavours: AI as engineering and AI as cognitive science. The emergence of LLMs and chatbots shows that significant progress has been made on the engineering side, but in the cognitive area we are still nowhere near equivalent breakthroughs. Yet that is where spectacular advances are needed if reasoning machines are to be a viable proposition.
    7. The misconception is that there are clear winners in arms races. As Scott Alexander noted the other day, victories in such races tend to be fleeting …
    8. MIKE: Andrew and I looked up the linked article by Scott Alexander, and he didn’t actually say that. But Spock did say that in a 1968 episode of Star Trek, so maybe that’s what the author of this article was actually thinking of.
    9. MIKE: Engineering is absolutely bringing us increasingly powerful artificial intelligence. A cognitive iteration of Artificial General Intelligence isn’t necessary for AI to be dangerous; even existentially dangerous.
    10. MIKE: And of course, the US doesn’t want to lose what is often called its hegemony, whether it be military, technological, or diplomatic. The only countries that really want the US to lose its so-called hegemony are the countries that want to replace it with their own.
    11. MIKE: Yes, the US should be worried, and the US is doing it’s best to prevent China or any other potential adversary from replacing its global position. But I think the real danger will be when many countries have some version of AI that they connect to weapons of varying power; even, perhaps inevitably, nuclear. Then, no one is safe.
    12. ANDREW: As much as I want to be the unshakably cool voice here, I do have to admit that I do now see the danger in even things like these large language models– just building blocks of true AI– and they get more dangerous by the day. It’s essentially the same problem we as humans have with scammers: say anything with enough confidence and someone will believe you, no matter how wrong you are. Chatbots are the modern con man: the con computer. I don’t know whether it’s comforting or concerning that they can’t even know they’re doing it.
    13. ANDREW: But I have to give my contrasting opinion on one thing: there’s no reason geopolitical critics of the US can’t simply want to see a more pluralistic world. Maybe they want to compete to have the most victories in that world, but it doesn’t mean they want to dethrone the US just to place the crown on their own heads.
    14. ANDREW: We can agree on one more thing, though. No nation should want to give their command and control capability to a computer, and no nation should want any other nation to do so either. The concern over a lack of human context processing ability is justified, but just as concerning is the potential for glitches or development oversights. As Mike is fond of saying, to err is human, but to really screw up, it takes a computer. When that screw up can cost millions or billions of lives, automation isn’t something anyone can afford.
11. Never Give Artificial Intelligence the Nuclear Codes; The temptation to automate command and control will be great. The danger is greater. By Ross Andersen | THEATLANTIC.COM | May 2, 2023, 7 AM ET
    1. No technology since the atomic bomb has inspired the apocalyptic imagination like artificial intelligence. Ever since ChatGPT began exhibiting glints of logical reasoning in November, the internet has been awash in doomsday scenarios. Many are self-consciously fanciful—they’re meant to jar us into envisioning how badly things could go wrong if an emerging intelligence comes to understand the world, and its own goals, even a little differently from how its human creators do. One scenario, however, requires less imagination, because the first steps toward it are arguably already being taken—the gradual integration of AI into the most destructive technologies we possess today.
    2. The world’s major military powers have begun a race to wire AI into warfare. For the moment, that mostly means giving algorithms control over individual weapons or drone swarms. No one is inviting AI to formulate grand strategy, or join a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But the same seductive logic that accelerated the nuclear arms race could, over a period of years, propel AI up the chain of command. How fast depends, in part, on how fast the technology advances, and it appears to be advancing quickly. How far depends on our foresight as humans, and on our ability to act with collective restraint.
    3. Jacquelyn Schneider, the director of the Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, recently [discussed] a game she devised in 2018. It models a fast-unfolding nuclear conflict and has been played 115 times by the kinds of people whose responses are of supreme interest: former heads of state, foreign ministers, senior NATO officers. …
    4. It goes something like this: The U.S. president and his Cabinet have just been hustled into the basement of the West Wing to receive a dire briefing. A territorial conflict has turned hot, and the enemy is mulling a nuclear first strike against the United States. The atmosphere in the Situation Room is charged. The hawks advise immediate preparations for a retaliatory strike, but the Cabinet soon learns of a disturbing wrinkle. The enemy has developed a new cyberweapon, and fresh intelligence suggests that it can penetrate the communication system that connects the president to his nuclear forces. Any launch commands that he sends may not reach the officers responsible for carrying them out.
    5. There are no good options in this scenario. Some players delegate launch authority to officers at missile sites, who must make their own judgments about whether a nuclear counterstrike is warranted—a scary proposition. But Schneider [said] she was most unsettled by a different strategy, pursued with surprising regularity. In many games, she said, players who feared a total breakdown of command and control wanted to automate their nuclear launch capability completely. They advocated the empowerment of algorithms to determine when a nuclear counterstrike was appropriate. AI alone would decide whether to enter into a nuclear exchange.
    6. Schneider’s game is, by design, short and stressful. Players’ automation directives were not typically spelled out with an engineer’s precision — how exactly would this be done? Could any automated system even be put in place before the culmination of the crisis? — but the impulse is telling nonetheless. “There is a wishful thinking about this technology,” Schneider said, “and my concern is that there will be this desire to use AI to decrease uncertainty by [leaders] who don’t understand the uncertainty of the algorithms themselves.” …
    7. MIKE: There are other, much scarier scenarios discussed in this story, some of which are closer to being tangibly real. And the danger here is closer to the scenario I recently posited about AI: It doesn’t have to become sentient to be extremely dangerous. It just has to “think” it’s following what it’s been taught to do in a digital sort of way.
    8. MIKE: I hate to bring up Star Trek in a discussion like this, but it’s a good analog. In the 1968 episode “The Ultimate Computer”, an intelligent machine is being tested to operate a starship with little or no human intervention. In what is supposed to be a mock engagement, it begins actually attacking Federation starships. It can’t tell the difference between a wargame and actual war. And humans can’t compete with it and have lost control of it.
    9. MIKE: If you’re familiar with the episode, this analogy is not perfect, but it’s applicable. Artificial intelligence is incredibly powerful as expert systems with fuzzy logic, and it will change the world over the next 10 years or so. But will we be able to keep it on a leash when we don’t even entirely understand what is going on inside it?
    10. ANDREW: The Ultimate Computer is maybe not a perfect allegory for the scenario in the article, but I’d say it matches my earlier comments pretty well. The Computer couldn’t distinguish between a war game and actual war– a development oversight. Something like this will happen with any military AI system. It may not be as severe as in Star Trek, and the public may never even hear about it, but its impact won’t matter– its potential will.
        
    11. REFERENCE: Star Trek: The Original Series — The Ultimate Computer – IMDb.COM
        1. Spock: The ship reacted more rapidly than human control could have maneuvered her. Tactics, deployment of weapons, all indicate an immense sophistication in computer control.

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