Kek!
Notable
God bless you too Swordy and all here today!
White House touts record-breaking ObamaCare enrollment
The White House on Wednesday touted the record-breaking numbers of people signing up for health insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges, with almost a month left in open enrollment.
More than 15 million people to date have signed up for health insurance, a 33 percent increase over the same point last year. The administration said it estimates more than 19 million people will have selected plans by the Jan. 16 deadline, an increase of 7 million compared to when President Biden took office.
On Dec. 15, the deadline for coverage starting Jan. 1, more than 745,000 people selected a plan through HealthCare.gov — the most in a day in history, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
“Thanks to policies I signed into law, millions of Americans are saving hundreds or thousands of dollars on health insurance premiums,” Biden said in a statement. “Extreme Republicans want to stop these efforts in their tracks. … At every turn, extreme Republicans continue to side with special interests to keep prescription drug prices high and to deny millions of people health coverage.”
More at: https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4369743-white-house-touts-record-breaking-obamacare-enrollment/
Milei administration tells Argentina's rioters they'll get their welfare benefits cut off -Updated
How's this for an idea?
Argentina's new president, Javier Milei, and his new justice minister, Patricia Bullrich, have advised Argentina's rioters they can kiss their welfare payments goodbye if they go out rioting – starting fires, spraying graffiti, breaking windows, blocking roads, and looting.
Milei's government in Argentina 🇦🇷 announced that they will cut off welfare benefits for everyone who riots and cuts off traffic in protests.
The security minister said that police will take pictures and drones will, too.
The most based spending cut! pic.twitter.com/LB0j6n1iN9
— Daniel Di Martino 🇺🇸🇻🇪 (@DanielDiMartino) December 19, 2023
Bullrich, a former political rival of Milei's, and an establishment conservative, has advised rioters, known as piqueteros in that country, that they'll be sending drones in to take names for those in the act of rioting, and that will be that.
Piqueteros have been a plague for decades in that country – when I visited Buenos Aires in 2002, they were a problem even then. I recall that one of my contacts there, either Diana Mondino (who is now Milei's foreign minister), or banker Jorge Bustamante, author of "La República Corporativa," a best-seller about how fascism evolved through Peronism to wreck Argentina, explained that the state actually paid for the always-leftist piqueteros to do what they do, as if they were a special interest group.
More at: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/12/milei_administration_tells_argentinas_rioters_theyll_get_their_welfare_benefits_cut_off.html
Double edged sword.
FTC bans Rite Aid facial recognition over 'reckless' use
Dec. 20 (UPI) – A Federal Trade Commission order Tuesday banned Rite Aid from using artificial intelligence facial recognition surveillance technology for five years because it falsely tagged women and people of color as shoplifters.
"Rite Aid's reckless use of facial surveillance systems left its customers facing humiliation and other harms, and its order violations put consumers' sensitive information at risk," said a statement from FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection Director Samuel Levine.
Levine called it a groundbreaking order as he vowed the FTC "will be vigilant in protecting the public from unfair biometric surveillance and unfair data security practices."
The FTC said, Rite Aid's actions disproportionately impacted people of color and women, generating thousands of false-positive matches.
Rite Aid was using AI-based facial recognition from 2012-2020 to ID shoplifters.
The problem, according to the FTC, is that the company allegedly failed to implement reasonable procedures to prevent the false flagging of customers who were erroneously tagged by the system.
The FTC said the real harm came when Rite Aid staff acted on the false information provided by the AI-driven tech, subjecting customers who were not shoplifters to "embarrassment, harassment, and other harm."
"Employees, acting on false positive alerts, followed consumers around its stores, searched them, ordered them to leave, called the police to confront or remove consumers, and publicly accused them, sometimes in front of friends or family, of shoplifting or other wrongdoing, according to the complaint," the FTC's statement said.
More: https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2023/12/20/FTC-Rite-Aid-AI-surveillance-banned/2431703079418/