A man from County Meath sets an Irish men's record for the Backyard Ultra Last One Standing race.

Crypto crash: Bitcoin and other online currencies tank as sell-off accelerates

Zachary Halaschak

May 19, 12:03 PM May 19, 12:03 PM

Bitcoin has shed more than 20% of its price in just the past 24 hours and has hit its lowest levels in months as it and other cryptocurrencies free fall.

As of Wednesday morning, the digital asset was trading below $35,000, a precipitous decline from its previous high of more than $60,000 just a little over a month ago. The drop has fueled fears that the fast-growing crypto market could be a bubble that will inevitably burst.

Bitcoin wasn’t alone in this week’s steep losses. All of the top 50 cryptocurrencies by market cap size were trending downward on Wednesday, except for cryptocurrencies designed to be tethered to the price of the U.S. dollar, according to CoinMarketCap.

The rout began last week when billionaire cryptocurrency investor and Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that his company would stop accepting Bitcoin for car purchases. Musk, who is known for pumping up the viral Dogecoin cryptocurrency, cited environmental concerns with mining Bitcoin as the reason for distancing Tesla, although the company still invested some $1.5 billion in Bitcoin.

ALLEGED $335 MILLION BITCOIN ‘MIXER’ ARRESTED AFTER ANALYSIS OF DECADELONG BLOCKCHAIN DATA

“Cryptocurrency is a good idea on many levels, and we believe it has a promising future, but this cannot come at a great cost to the environment,” Musk said of his decision.

The sell-off then further accelerated this week when the People’s Bank of China issued a statement reiterating that digital tokens can’t be used as a form of payment. A post on the bank’s WeChat account said that financial institutions can’t price products with cryptocurrencies because they are not real currencies.

The dropping coins were being discussed on social media, with cryptocurrency-related topics dominating three of the top five trending topics on Twitter. Trending at No. 2 was “#BuyTheDip,” which is a reference to crypto traders encouraging others to buy Bitcoin at the lower price it has dropped to in order to see bigger gains if it rockets back up.

“This is going to be the first ‘welcome to crypto’ day for a lot of new entrants,” Stephane Ouellette, CEO and co-founder of FRNT Financial, told Bloomberg. “The history of these assets has been littered with aggressive rallies and sickening selloffs.”

In addition to Bitcoin, Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency, was down, shredding more than a quarter of its value in just 24 hours. As of Wednesday morning, it sat perched at about $2,500 per share, down from recent peaks of $4,300. The “meme coin” Dogecoin sat at about 36 cents per share, down from more than 70-cent highs.

As Bitcoin skyrocketed in value over the past several months, many big names have waded into the cryptocurrency waters. Some NFL players have dabbled in the growing market. Sean Culkin, a tight end who was recently released by the Kansas City Chiefs, had previously vowed to convert 100% of his paycheck to cryptocurrency.

“This may be new for me, but not new for #Bitcoin Remember your time preference,” Culkin tweeted on Wednesday morning, along with the hashtag #Hodl, which is a reference to holding on to crypto assets despite a plunge.

Offensive tackle Russell Okung, a free agent who last played with the Carolina Panthers in 2020, is also a major investor in Bitcoin. He wrote on Twitter after the crash, “Y’all don’t get it. I’m not selling my Bitcoin, ever.”

Coinbase, which is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S. by trading volume, was also trending on Twitter. The exchange experienced a “partial” outage on Wednesday morning as traders scrambled amid the chaos of the drops. Coinbase and crypto exchange Binance were having issues related to Ethereum withdrawals due to “network congestion,” the Verge reported.

U.S. stocks dropped on Wednesday alongside shares of the cryptocurrencies. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 445 points, or 1.3%, and the S&P 500 dropped 1.2%. Tesla, which made the large investment in Bitcoin, was down about 4%, and shares of Coinbase, which just went public last month, was down about 6.8 percentage points.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has previously branded Bitcoin as “inefficient” and has knocked the environmental impact of the cryptocurrency.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

“I don’t think that Bitcoin … is widely used as a transaction mechanism,” she said in February. “To the extent it is used, I fear it’s often for illicit finance. It’s an extremely inefficient way of conducting transactions, and the amount of energy that’s consumed in processing those transactions is staggering.”

© 2021 Washington Examiner

Floor speech from MTG in the last hour     Instead of continuing the witch hunt against President Trump and his supporters, we need to investigate BLM/Antifa domestic terrorism! Watch my floor speech from this morning! pic.twitter.com/naaB7dvky5 — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG) May 18, 2021          

The Maricopa Board of Supervisors (BOS) met yesterday at 1 p.m. Two scorching letters sent in response to Senate President Karen Fann’s May 12 letter were published on the Maricopa County government website shortly after. The letters signed by the board members and attendees Recorder Stephen Richer, Sheriff Paul Penzone, Treasurer John Allen, Assessor Eddie Cook, and Superintendent Steve Watson showed a united front.

During the press conference that followed on Monday, the Supervisors indicated their wish to “draw a line in the sand” to stop “answering the same questions over and over again.”  Another meeting has been called for Tuesday, May 18 at 1 p.m.

During the special meeting yesterday, Chairman Sellers stated that the audit and Fann’s letter are a “circus.” President Fann’s letter is just an “attempt to legitimize a grift disguised as an audit,” he stated in the meeting. The Supervisors threw out words like “lies,” “mockery,” “conspiracy and rumor” in reference to the audit and their perceived roles in it by some in the Senate and the public.

The full meeting can be viewed below:

The first 14-page letter was a narrative response to the specific questions posed by Fann last week in her letter. Reportedly, the letter was leaked to the media before it was sent to Fann. Bill Gates stated Fann’s letter was a “political letter.” The letter answered the questions in order and methodically, maintaining that no databases were deleted, chain-of-custody allegations are “demonstrably false” and show a “spectacular lack of understanding.”

The letter also explained that the broken seals at that point in the chain of custody were normal and “no law requires” the Election Department “to divide batches of ballots using the Early Voting Transmittal Slips.” Sealing ballots with regular tape is also “customary,” per the letter. In reference to the “slip logs” or, more precisely, the “Early Voting Transmittal Slips,” the letter is somewhat sarcastic in tone as it walks the reader through a brief tutorial on the subject since, as stated in the letter, “it is obvious that your contractors have no understanding of these matters.”

Regarding the admin passwords issue, the letter reiterated earlier statements that the BOS simply “cannot produce what we do not possess.” The letter states that the BOS has no intention to “provide your ‘auditors’ access to the County’s routers because to do so “could compromise the security of the County’s network, which in turn could compromise the security of sensitive, protected and critical data.”  The “blueprint” falling “into the wrong hands” could produce a “catastrophic” result, they said.

The letter seemed to strongly indicate that the Supervisors do not think the audit is a serious one, and they say it should be ended because it is harming them and public confidence. They stated they will not attend the meeting on May 18.

A second more technical 17-page letter followed, showing images, examples, and exhibits that further substantiate the answers in the first letter. The technical letter purports to explain, among other things, the auditors’ poor understanding of the supposed database deletions. In fact, the letter explains, there were no deletions, but rather, “Microsoft SQL (MSSQL) Services will often change the ‘metadata’ (additional data on files such as creation date, access date, modified date, owner, etc.) on MSSQL database files based on MSSQL actions that are needed to run the databases.” In other words, the “deletions” can be explained by changes in metadata based on “MSSQL services shutdown time,” as different from when the files were created.

Two screenshots taken from the Arizona Secretary of State 2019 Election Procedures Manual captured in the Arizona Conservatives Take Action telegram room seem to indicate that valid questions about passwords and procedures persist and conflict with what is being presented by the BOS.

One of the rules states that the passwords must be changed regularly and “may not be a vendor-supplied password.” It is unclear from the reading whether the passwords referenced are admin passwords. The rules also state that there can be no “remote access software or any capability to remotely access the system,” which addresses the issue of router security. If there is mapping to protect, it would seem to follow that the routers must be connected to a remote access system.

 

Statements from officials were included in the technical letter. Chair Jack Sellers and Maricopa County Sheriff Paul Penzone provided statements:

GOP Chair, Kelli Ward, was the featured guest on the Dark to Light Podcast with Frank and Beanz on Monday. She believes the audit is legitimate and unbiased. She stated that when Senate President Fann’s letter “hit the fan because there are so many egregious questions, questionable activity by the County…it was a stinging letter, but it was very professionally written. But what these guys, like Stephen Richer, the new recorder in Maricopa County, Jack Sellers…Arizona’s Bill Gates…They’ve been out there tweeting, trying to explain away their bad decisions that they made after this election, in my opinion.”

Ward also clarified that the “votED database is not the same as the votER database, and Stephen Richer was trying to equate the two. No one has made an accusation that the voter database has been deleted. The concern that Karen Fann raised is that the votED database and the tally that went along with that…appear[s] to be gone from the mainframe of this computer. And the reason she knows that is the client, the client servers—the other little computers that are a part of that network reference it, but it doesn’t exist on the big daddy main part of the computer.”

Cyber Ninjas CEO, Doug Logan who leads the audit, made an emotional appeal on the first day of the audit in April, saying that he “wants a transparent audit to be in place so that people can trust the results so we can get everyone on the same page. If we go through here and we don’t find any fraud, I’m going to be ecstatic.” Many have called him a conspiracy theorist, and he has consistently been a target of derision by the Board of Supervisors in Maricopa County.

CEO of Cyber Ninjas Doug Logan speaks out about the Maricopa County audit.

Note how Faux News labels him an election conspiracy theorist.#EnemyOfThePeople https://t.co/3cXkdZ6DcB

— Golden Advice (@RichardStiller4) April 23, 2021

Reportedly, the Arizona State Senate is now considering expanding their audit to include more than the Senatorial and Presidential races. According to the liaison for the audit, Ken Bennett, the expanded audit would be separate, looking only at the images of all 2.1 million ballots. The audit is on pause for a week because of previous reservations for using the Colosseum for graduation ceremonies this week.

The link to today’s live stream of the audit update meeting can be found in Ward’s tweet below:

Per Sen @FannKfann, TODAY 5/18, the AZ Senate will hold a hearing to get an update on the audit from the vendor, address the questions submitted to #AZSEN & the written response from Maricopa Co BOS. The meeting will start at 1 pm MT live streamed here:https://t.co/o4sjWgX6xR

— Dr. Kelli Ward (@kelliwardaz) May 18, 2021

The post Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Say Fann Letter Was Defamatory appeared first on UncoverDC.

The Maricopa Board of Supervisors is meeting today before their meeting Tuesday with the Arizona State Senate to answer questions about missing files from their voting machines and software handed over to the Senate Auditors.

Last week, the Gateway Pundit reported about the emergency meeting that was called by the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, after the County was reportedly unable to provide passwords to the auditors performing an audit of the county’s 2020 Election results.  They also did not provide access to the routers which were requested in the audit as well.

On Wednesday afternoon, it was discovered that “the entire database directory” for the 2020 General election, showing the “Results Tally and Reporting,” had been deleted from the voting machines!

Also, the Arizona Audit Team found “significant discrepancies” between the number of ballots therein and the batch reports included in the boxes.

The data drives that were deleted included adjudicated files from the 2020 election.

President of the Arizona Senate Karen Fann released a letter to Chairman Sellers, demanding answers on Wednesday night.

Senator Karen Fann called the Maricopa County Supervisors to come before the Arizona Senate next Tuesday and explains how the election databases were deleted from the voting machines just 10 days before the machines were turned over to the Senate forensic audit team!

On Thursday night the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors held a meeting and released a statement smearing the Arizona Senate and the Arizona Audit Team, accusing them of “causing agitation.”

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors then scheduled a meeting for Monday — the day before the Senate meeting.

That meeting is about to start.

From the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors website:

• Following CDC guidelines regarding recommendation to limit social gatherings, no residents will be allowed in the Board of Supervisors‘ meeting rooms.
• Residents can submit comments related to the May 17, 2021, Board Meeting agenda by 8:00 am on Monday, May 17, by emailing Agenda.Comments@Maricopa.Gov or calling 602-506-3766.
• Residents wishing to comment on any Board related item, may send an email to Agenda.Comments@Maricopa.Gov.  
• Residents can watch the Board meeting live-streamed at Maricopa.Gov or Maricopa.Gov/324 at the time of the meeting.
• Residents can also watch via GoToWebinar.com. Pre-registration may be done via this link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/6534637712388831501 and entering the webinar meeting ID 823-429-499. 
• Residents may listen to the Webinar by dialing 1  (914) 614-3221, and entering the Audio Access code 709-152-954#.  Long distance charges may apply.  
• No Audio PIN is needed to listen only.  

Here is the livestream video:

The post Live-Stream Video: Panicked Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Hold Monday Meeting Before Tuesday’s Senate Grilling — Starting at 4 PM ET appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

So many things are represented in this one photo:

The BBC's Ros Atkins looks into Bitcoin's affect on the environment after Tesla suspended vehicle purchases using Bitcoin due to climate change concerns.

China says its Mars probe and accompanying rover are expected to land on the red planet sometime between Saturday and Wednesday Beijing time. The China National Space Administration said in a brief notice that the...

DANEGELD: Colonial Pipeline Paid Nearly $5 Million In Ransom To Hacker Group.

The U.S. will consider pilot programs for Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) Digital Dollars from the Digital Dollar Foundation (DDF) and private sector interests. One market actor involved is Accenture, an Irish company that was Andersen Consulting prior to its split from Arthur Andersen, the accounting firm during Enron’s 2001 accounting scandal.

Accenture is providing the “first phase of funding” for the DDF to “convene private sector thought leaders and actors” for a Digital Dollar Project (DDP) to “assess benefits and outstanding challenges.” Accenture will make the early testing grounds “accessible to all stakeholders” and is matching funds for the launch of the first five pilot programs. “The DDP is open to participants from all relevant sectors, including commercial institutions, the innovation community, non-profit organizations, and universities…” The first three pilot programs are to be announced within two months. “DDP intends to make its CBDC test ground transparent and, public and private, and serve as a neutral platform.”

The DDF is led by J. Christopher Giancarlo, Charles H. Giancarlo, and Daniel Gorfine. Per co-founder Christoper Giancarlo, former chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), “There are conferences and papers coming out every week around the world on CBDCs based on data from other countries… What there is not, is any real data and testing from the United States to inform that debate. We’re seeking to generate that real-world data,” and “We need to better understand how to balance the complex issues of a CBDC and how to incorporate key societal values, like privacy rights, financial inclusion, and rule of law.”

According to the Digital Dollar Foundation and Accenture’s May 3rd press release: “The DDP will release to the public the results of and insights from the pilots for use in academic study, as well as policy consideration by Congress.” DDF is promising that CBDC’s will bring modernization, facilitate economic inclusion, and represent a frontier for innovation in fields such as digital identity. The press release also says, “80% of the world’s central banks are engaged in research or experimentation toward developing a CBDC. These include the People’s Bank of China, the European Central Bank, and the Bank of England.” China’s digital yuan is launching soon and being tested in major cities, including Beijing and Hong Kong, complete with expiration dates for a new way to centralize control over monetary stability or lack thereof. Such a manageable currency gives officials another tool to control, or create, boom and bust cycles.

In October of 2020, Trump-appointed Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell told a panel on digital payments hosted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), “We do think it’s more important to get it right than to be first,” assuring a look at potential benefits of a CBDC, potential risks, and to “recognize the important trade-offs.” He noted the need to evaluate considerations including cyberattacks, counterfeiting, fraud, illicit activity, the effect on monetary policy, and “preserving user privacy and security.”

In February of this year, at a conference hosted by the NYT, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said, “Too many Americans really don’t have access to easy payment systems and to banking accounts… a digital dollar, a central bank digital currency, could help with [that, and] …it could result in faster, safer and cheaper payments….” Her cautions and concerns included impact on the banking system and financial stability, money laundering, and consumer protection. She also added, “Would it cause a huge movement of deposits out of banks and into the Fed? Would the Fed deal with retail customers or try to do this at a wholesale level?”

The DDP’s whitepaper states, “The digital dollar will support a balance between individual privacy rights and necessary compliance and regulatory processes, decided upon by policymakers and ultimately reflecting the jurisprudence around the Fourth Amendment… A digital dollar will not impact the Federal Reserve’s ability to affect monetary policy and control inflation… [it] could act as a new policy tool … The chosen technological architecture will offer the flexibility to adapt configurability based on policy and economic considerations … A digital dollar will act as a catalyst for innovation and will not be antithetical to the development of private sector initiatives.”

In an interview with Paypal President and CEO Dan Schulman, who is also founding CEO of Virgin Mobile and former Sprint executive: “Ten years from now, you will see a tremendous decline in the use of cash. All form factors of payment will collapse into the mobile phone… central banks need to rethink monetary policy…” PayPal had a record year during the 2020 lockdown, processing 15 billion+ payments for its 375 million users, launching contactless QR-code payments in 20 markets, and recently adding limited cryptocurrency functionality (users can only buy Bitcoin through Paypal and cannot send bitcoin into or out of their account).

Shulman is vying for his company to be a partner to new central digital dollar systems: “Central bank-issued digital currencies … might allow the government to open up Fed funding to other institutions besides banks, potentially companies like PayPal… so if you make a transaction it’s not your username and password that’s giving you permission to do that. It is 130 different variables that we look at on every single transaction, in milliseconds, to be sure that it’s you. It’s this idea of Big Data of really understanding who you are, not who you said you are.”

The Economist says, “[State issued digital currencies] could give governments, or a few private bosses, a wealth of information about citizens. It would also make the institutions a lot more vulnerable. A cyber-attack on the American financial system that closed JPMorgan Chase for a time would be distressing. A similar attack that shut down a Federal Reserve digital currency could be devastating.”

CBDC’s compete with a mature cryptocurrency market that has already solved many of these issues. Many cryptocurrency projects are focused on increasing the privacy of transactions on their networks, while CBDC’s tend toward trackability. None of the top cryptocoins presumes that it would benefit from allowing the creators of the coins to decide how money is spent, whereas proposals for a central bank currency are using that as a selling point. Satoshi Nakamoto’s Whitepaper shows that Bitcoin was invented to allow peer-to-peer transactions that don’t need a financial institution between them. Bitcoin is thus decentralized democratically among its users, while CBDC’s are under the control of a central entity. CBDC’s could be stable in value over time, unlike Bitcoin, which has required the invention of separate cryptocurrencies pegged 1:1 to the dollar to mitigate its high volatility. Bitcoin has scarcity baked in – the number in circulation is a known constant, while a federal bank could choose to change the supply of digital dollars at any time. Doing so changes the value of each digital dollar already in circulation, which can punish savers by effectively transferring wealth to recipients of the newly created supply. As such, Ron Paul calls GovCoins the “21st century equivalent of throwing money from helicopters.”

Keith Weiner for MoneyMetals reasons that Fedcoin is inevitable because, without a digital dollar to enforce negative interest rates, customers would withdraw rather than pay the bank to hold money for them. Consumers now have Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as an option to attempt to insulate themselves from inflationary confiscation of wealth to add to assets like land and precious metals. Weiner goes on to highlight the contrast between these two establishment leaders:

“Powell is more conservative, and his focus is on addressing the potential competitive threat of bitcoin and digital currencies from countries such as China. However, if he really wanted to make the dollar more competitive against the yuan, then he would just abuse the Fed’s credit less. Yellen nods to a progressive idea, saying that a Fedcoin ‘could help address hurdles to financial inclusion in the U.S. among low-income households.’ However, if she really wanted the ‘unbankables’ to be able to open accounts, then she would just repeal anti-money laundering and other regulations that penalize a bank for crimes committed by its clients.”

It remains to be seen whether digital currencies designed by the federal government and central banks in cooperation with private-sector financial interests in the U.S. will be fully trackable and confiscatable as most pilots worldwide propose. The opportunity for programmable functionality would seem too tempting to resist. A digital dollar could deposit funds in any account nearly instantaneously, such as Coronavirus or other stimulus payments, welfare benefits, and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan deposits. Central authorities could make inflation regulation baked-in, with parameters easily changeable by policymakers. It could also be used with A.I. to auto-process taxes and reparations or to prohibit unwanted behavior, such as the purchase of banned substances or books, without calling on human law enforcement.

The post Digital Dollar: Central Bank Currency to Compete with Bitcoin appeared first on UncoverDC.

Last week, the Gateway Pundit reported about the emergency meeting that was called by the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, after the County was reportedly unable to provide passwords to the auditors performing an audit of the county’s 2020 Election results.  They also did not provide access to the routers which were requested in the audit as well.

This afternoon, it was discovered that “the entire database” for the 2020 General election, showing the “Results Tally and Reporting,” has been deleted!

100 Percent Fed Up reports– President of the Arizona Senate Karen Fann has written a letter to Chairman Sellers, demanding answers.

Here is the letter to Maricopa County Supervisor Chairman Jack Sellers from Arizona Senate President Karen Fann:

Dear Chairman Sellers:

I am writing to seek your assistance and cooperation in the resolution of three (3) serious issues that have arisen in the course of the Senate’s ongoing audit of the returns of the November 3, 2020, general election in Maricopa County.

I. Ongoing Non-Compliance with the Legislative Subpoenas

The first issue concerns Maricopa County’s apparent intent to renege on its previous commitment to comply fully with the legislative subpoenas issued on January 13, 2021, which, as you know, Judge Thomason found were valid and enforceable.

To date, attorneys for Maricopa County have refused to produce virtual images of routers used in connection with the general election, relying on a conclusory and unsupported assertion that providing the routers would somehow “endanger the lives of law enforcement officers, their operations, or the protected health information and personal data of Maricopa County’s citizens.”If true, the fact that Maricopa County stores on its routers substantial quantities of citizens’ and employees’ highly sensitive personal information is an alarming indictment of the County’s lax data security practices, rather than of the legislative subpoenas.

Similarly, the County’s assertion that producing the internet routers for inspection would cost up to $6,000,000 seems at odds with Deputy County Attorney Joseph La Rue’s prior representation to Audit Liaison Ken Bennett that the routers already had been disconnected from the County’s network and were prepared for imminent delivery to the Senate.

Nevertheless, in an effort to resolve the dispute regarding production of the routers, we propose that agents of CyFIR, an experienced digital forensics firm and subcontractor of Cyber Ninjas, review virtual images of the relevant routers in Maricopa County facilities and in the presence of representatives of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. Such an arrangement would permit Maricopa County to retain custody and monitor the review of router data while ensuring that the Senate may access the information it requires—and to which it is constitutionally entitled—to successfully complete its audit. The Senate has no interest in viewing or taking possession of any information that is unrelated to the administration of the 2020 general election.

Separately, Maricopa County has refused to provide the passwords necessary to access vote tabulation devices. Its attorneys’ insistence that the County does not have custody or control of this information is belied by the County’s conduct of its own audits, which, if they were as comprehensive as they purported to be, almost certainly would have entailed use of the passwords to examine the tabulation devices, and it strains credulity to posit that the County has no contractual right to obtain (i.e., control of) password information from Dominion.

II. Chain of Custody and Ballot Organization Anomalies

As the audit has progressed, the Senate’s contractors have become aware of apparent omissions, inconsistencies, and anomalies relating to Maricopa County’s handling, organization, and storage of ballots.We hope you can assist us in understanding these issues, including specifically the following:

1. 1. The County has not provided any chain-of-custody documentation for the ballots.Does such documentation exist, and if so, will it be produced?
   2. The bags in which the ballots were stored are not sealed, although the audit team has found at the bottom of many boxes cut seals of the type that would have sealed a ballot bag. Why were these seals placed at the bottom of the boxes?
   3. Batches within a box are frequently separated by only a divider without any indication of the corresponding batch numbers.In some cases, the batch dividers are missing altogether.This lack of organization has significantly complicated and delayed the audit team’s ballot processing efforts.What are the County’s procedures for sorting, organizing, and packaging ballot batches?
   4. Most of the ballot boxes were sealed merely with regular tape and not secured by any kind of tamper-evident seal.Is that the County’s customary practice for storing ballots?
   5. The audit team has encountered a significant number of instances in which there is a disparity between the actual number of ballots contained in a batch and the total denoted on the pink report slip accompanying the batch.In most of these instances, the total on the pink report slip is greater than the number of ballots in the batch, although there are a few instances in which the total is lower.What are the reasons for these discrepancies?For your reference, please see several illustrative (i.e., not comprehensive) examples in the table below:

For your convenience, images of the corresponding pink report slips are attached in Exhibit A.

III. Deleted Databases

We have recently discovered that the entire “Database” directory from the D drive of the machine “EMSPrimary” has been deleted. This removes election related details that appear to have been covered by the subpoena. In addition, the main database for the Election Management System (EMS) Software, “Results Tally and Reporting,” is not located anywhere on the EMSPrimary machine, even though all of the EMS Clients reference that machine as the location of the database. This suggests that the main database for all election-related data for the November 2020 General Election has been removed. Can you please advise as to why these folders were deleted, and whether there are any backups that may contain the deleted folders?

The image below shows the location of the files known to be deleted. In addition, the main database for “Results Tally and Reporting” is not present.

* * *

I am hopeful that we can constructively resolve these issues and questions without recourse to additional subpoenas or other compulsory processes.To that end, I invite you and any other officers or employees of Maricopa County (to include officials in the Elections Department) who possess knowledge or information concerning the matters set forth above to a meeting at the Arizona State Capitol on Tuesday, May 18, 2021, at 1:00 p.m. in Hearing Room 109. Chairman Petersen, former Secretary Bennett, and I will attend the meeting, which will be live-streamed to the public.

Please let me know at your earliest convenience whether you accept my invitation and, if so, which Maricopa County personnel will attend.

Thank you for your cooperation on these important issues of public concern.

Respectfully,

Karen Fann, President

Arizona State Senate

When inspectors received the boxes of ballots where the audit was being performed, the tamper-proof tape was cut on the boxes and the number of ballots inside the boxes was not the same as what was reported by the County reporter, and what was turned over to the Senate don’t line up.

A week before the machines were turned over, records were deleted by an administrator—this has to be treated as an act of intentional cover-up!

The Maricopa Arizona Audit team has also tweeted about the breaking bombshell:

Breaking Update: Maricopa County deleted a directory full of election databases from the 2020 election cycle days before the election equipment was delivered to the audit. This is spoliation of evidence!

Breaking Update: Maricopa County deleted a directory full of election databases from the 2020 election cycle days before the election equipment was delivered to the audit. This is spoliation of evidence! pic.twitter.com/mY0fmmFXAm

— Maricopa Arizona Audit (@ArizonaAudit) May 13, 2021

Why would the database be deleted unless there was something massive they were trying to hide? This article is for everyone who’s been trying to convince Americans that no voter fraud took place in the November election and that it was the safest and most secure election in modern history.

Nothing to see here!

The post BREAKING: Maricopa County Elections Officials DELETED ENTIRE DATABASE from Voting Machines – Including “All Election Information” from Main Database appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Most of the mainstream media tend to view media activist James O’Keefe and fellow undercover journalists at Project Veritas as annoying pests. In fact, O’Keefe is a silent assassin.

After years of mostly limiting himself to defending against lawsuits brought by others and forcing media outlets to issue retractions about their often-slanderous coverage of Project Veritas, O’Keefe has suddenly begun filing defamation lawsuits. I believe he will win them.

It began in October of last year when the New York Times published a news article claiming that Project Veritas’ undercover expose of an illegal ballot-harvesting scheme in Minneapolis, Minnesota was a “coordinated disinformation campaign.”  In its story, the New York Times reporters claimed Project Veritas relied on “unidentified sources” and that the videos showed no actual evidence of any ballot harvesting.

But the undercover videos provided by Project Veritas identifies multiple persons by name and image which clearly discuss the fact what they are doing harvesting these ballots are against the law in Minnesota. Veritas also interviewed a former insider of the ballot harvesting scheme on camera, a whistleblower named Omar Jamal.

After the New York Times refused to issue a retraction, Project Veritas filed a lawsuit alleging defamation and is seeking actual and punitive damages.

“The New York Times made this false claim saying our story relied solely on unidentified sources and showed no evidence of ballot harvesting. This is absolute hogwash, dishonest and libelous,” said Project Veritas President James O’Keefe in a video he made specifically to announce the filing of the lawsuit.

There was a recent development in the case when the presiding judge denied the New York Times motion to dismiss the Project Veritas lawsuit. Instead of dismissing the case, New York State Supreme Court Judge Charles Wood ruled that Project Veritas will get a chance to prove defamation in court. The attempted defense offered by the New York Times failed to impress the judge.

As Brit Hume of Fox News put it in a tweet as he linked a column by law Professor Jonathan Turley on the matter, “One of the remarkable things about this case is that not only did the New York Times acknowledge their reporters injected their opinions into a news story, they made that part of their defense!”

One of the remarkable things about this case is that no only did the New York Times acknowledge their reporters injected their opinions into a news story, they made that part of their defense! https://t.co/pwB4UcDXt6

— Brit Hume (@brithume) April 25, 2021

But as that latest development in the lawsuit against the New York Times was going on, Project Veritas was in the midst of rolling out yet another undercover sting, this one targeting CNN.

In a series of highly damaging and embarrassing undercover videos, Project Veritas showed top CNN brass admitting on camera that the network doesn’t do real news but instead promotes propaganda, and their biggest propaganda project was getting former President Trump removed from office.

In one of the videos, a CNN technical director named Charlie Chester boasts that the network has perfected ‘the art of manipulation’ and is using it to ‘change the world’.

These latest CNN videos were apparently the final straw. They were too revealing and too damaging to a network already drowning in a “Trump Slump.” Something had to be done to reduce O’Keefe’s visibility. And Twitter is the social media platform in which Veritas’ undercover stings have been most effectively spread.

Although O’Keefe and Project Veritas have been suspended briefly from Twitter several times in the past, shortly after the debut of the latest CNN video series, Twitter announced it was banning them permanently. In the statement announcing the double ban of both O’Keefe’s personal account and the Project Veritas account, Twitter claimed O’Keefe had violated the social media companies’ rules on spam and platform manipulation.

A Twitter spokesman told Forbes Magazine that O’Keefe had been running multiple fake accounts to “artificially amplify or disrupt conversations,” although Forbes reporter Joe Walsh rightly notes that Twitter failed to provide any details about a specific infraction of the rules.

As it so happens Twitter will get its chance to discuss in court the specific details of how O’Keefe was supposedly violating the rules by running multiple fake accounts because he filed a defamation lawsuit against Twitter on April 19.

But O’Keefe still wasn’t done yet. When CNN anchor Ana Cabera said on the air that Twitter had permanently banned O’Keefe for ‘spreading misinformation,’ O’Keefe’s response was to file his third lawsuit in the past 6 months for defamation. O’Keefe is now suing the New York Times, Twitter, and CNN if you’re keeping count.

But that’s not all. Last week Project Veritas rolled out a campy yet effective music video that ended with the announcement of a new branch of the organization, called Project Veritas Legal, created to allow others to sue the mainstream media for slander and defamation.

O’Keefe clearly intends to bury the Fake News media with an avalanche of lawsuits brought by the people they have spent years getting away with defaming in the service of their never-ending propaganda.

Over the years a legion of people have talked about suing the news media for blatant cases of journalistic malpractice.  Others have declared that Big Tech should be sued for its censorship and de-platforming of Conservatives.  But nobody ever really did anything. Well, O’Keefe is done talking about it. He’s making it happen.

Project Veritas Legal’s First Lawsuit: Jesse Hicks

It appears that many of these media organizations that have been engaging in regular journalistic malpractice over the years of the Trump Presidency attempted to cover themselves from legal liability by making heavy use of “freelance journalists”: independent contractors hired by the story who are not permanent employees.

This allows the media outlets to print the most irresponsible and defamatory allegations against anyone, and if later exposed, the editors can say, “well, that person doesn’t really work for us; they are freelance. We’re not liable. You’re problem with the freelancer, not us.” It appears to me that many of these freelance journalists have been using extremely questionable methods in their reporting while giving the media outlets that publish their work plausible deniability.

This could be why O’Keefe is going after freelancer Jesse Hicks as the very first lawsuit filed by Project Veritas Legal. O’Keefe claims that Hicks stupidly used his real phone number while pretending to be a Project Veritas employee as he attempted to obtain inside information. It is illegal to impersonate someone to trick people into giving you publicly unavailable information in many states.

If O’Keefe can prove this in court, the question that arises is what if Hicks used the same kind of shady tactics for stories he wrote for the many media outlets that published his work?  Could they be legally liable for publishing information obtained by fraud? Does simply exclaiming “He was only a freelancer!” absolve the editors of all responsibility?

O’Keefe Isn’t After Money or A Return to Anonymity

O’Keefe has stated many times he has no intention of settling any of these lawsuits he has filed. The problem with settling a defamation lawsuit is that certain conditions must be agreed to for the settlement to be reached. Never publicly revealing what those conditions are is a key part of the settlement.

This was the case with Nicholas Sandmann, the young man defamed by multiple media outlets in the Covington Catholic case. The conditions of the settlement the Sandmann’s reached with CNN and The Washington Post were never be made public. While settling, both CNN and the Post stridently repeated there was no wrongdoing on their part; they were making no public admission of any defamation or slander whatsoever; they were settling merely to make the case go away.

O’Keefe has made numerous public statements that he will not settle any of these defamation cases. His goal is a jury trial and a verdict. He’s not interested in shopping conditions with Twitter, or CNN, or the New York Times as he seeks a payout.

While the Sandmann family understandably wanted out of the public eye just as quickly as that could be achieved, James O’Keefe and Project Veritas most certainly do not want to be out of the public eye. Far from it. They thrive on publicity. And as these lawsuits go forward, they will be getting plenty of it. I wish them all the success in the world.

The post At Last, Someone With Guts appeared first on UncoverDC.

Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont, on April 28, signed HB6423 into law—disappointing many residents and parents who have been fighting for months against the legislation, as reported by UncoverDC in February. The bill prevents parents from citing religious or philosophical beliefs in refusing to vaccinate their children. The final Senate vote was 22 to 14, with two Democrats—Sens. Cathy Osten of Sprague and Dennis Bradley of Bridgeport—joining the Republicans in rejecting the measure. The religious exemption will be null and void on Sept. 1, 2022. Lamont’s press release can be found here.

According to reporting by the Connecticut Mirror:

“Since 1959, Connecticut has required that children attending school receive vaccines against certain diseases including measles, mumps, rubella, and chickenpox before enrollment. When required immunizations were signed into law, the legislature established two distinct types of exemptions. A medical exemption can be claimed by students with health conditions that bar them from receiving certain vaccines. The other exemption allows students to opt-out of receiving vaccines if the family’s religious views conflict with receiving certain vaccines. Historically, religious exemptions have not posed a threat to public safety in Connecticut. Now, however, the number of students claiming these exemptions has grown significantly, causing great concern. During the 2017-18 school year, 7,042 children across all grade levels claimed the religious exemption. By the 2018-19 school year, the number jumped to 7,782, and 8,328 students claimed the exemption in the 2019-20 school year.” Importantly, Connecticut has had religious exemption since 1959, when the first vaccine for polio was introduced.

Reporting by NBC Connecticut indicates that some legislators feel strongly that exemptions from childhood vaccines put the public at risk. The article quotes Rep. Jaime Foster, D-Ellington, as having said that the “bill was not controversial ‘for those with expertise…When you trust scientists, when you trust medical providers, the choice is not hard.'” The article also stated that she said the “‘financial consequence’ of the 2018 measles outbreak in New York was $8.4 million. Between 2004 and 2017, the median cost of a measles outbreak was $32,000, per case, according to another peer-reviewed study cited by Foster.”

Connecticut legislators have tried for years to pass such a bill, and many think that the Covid19 virus finally gave them the boost they needed. For now, the law refers to childhood vaccines; however, UncoverDC readdressed the issues with Kate Kraemer on Tuesday now that the bill has passed. Kraemer worries that a Covid19 vaccine mandate is just around the corner—meaning the vaccine would be added to the list of required childhood vaccines to attend school.

In the follow-up interview, UncoverDC asked Connecticut resident and parent activist Kate Kraemer where things stand with the parent initiatives in the state now. Kraemer is associated with the Connecticut Freedom Alliance and is also an admin for the Facebook page with 18,000 members called Connecticut Residents Against Medical Mandates (CTRAMM). She has also created a website with the same name. She and other parents organized another huge rally on the day the legislation was passed where, she estimates, 7,000 to 8,000 people attended.

Kraemer told UncoverDC that Lamont has said he is announcing guidance for the exemption on Friday, and she suspects he will also indicate his support for a vaccine mandate that day.

“This is a ticking time bomb,” Kraemer stated, “So many parents here are up in arms. Many parents were unaware and learned just days before the bill was passed that the exemption would be taken away. They thought they were safe; they had their paperwork submitted. However, language in the bill (the word enrollment) makes it difficult to discern what the law actually means. Parents thought if they had their paperwork by the 28th, they were safe. The law also leaves open the decisions to comply with the legislation up to the individual superintendents in each school district. There is a conflict of interest there too because the attorneys who submit guidance to 80 percent of Connecticut schools are associated with the same law firm where House Speaker Matt Ritter’s sister works.” 

The Democrat attorney and Speaker follows in his father George Ritter’s footsteps. Rep Matt Ritter is the representative for District 1-Hartford. According to Kraemer, he is popular and well ensconced in the community, and his “hard push” to pass the bill was really what instigated the bill in the first place. Ritter Sr. was also Speaker and has connections to the pharmaceutical industry, according to Kraemer.

UncoverDC confirmed that Ritter Sr. does seem to have a history with the drug industry because of his association with a “division of Brown Rudnick—a law and lobbying firm that represents drug manufacturer Boehringer Ingelheim and the Healthcare Distribution Alliance. The latter describes itself as ‘the national organization representing primary pharmaceutical distributors,’” as reported by the International Business Times in 2017. The article states that he ran that division.

The meaning of the word “enrollment” is the language that is causing confusion. Many parents understood enrollment to mean registered by April 28. However, some school officials have pushed back, saying that, really, enrollment means your child must not only be registered but already enrolled as a current student in the school to be grandfathered in. This could mean that parents who have first-time pre-k registrations would not be able to cite a religious exemption for childhood vaccines.

Additionally, there has also been confusion about the actual deadline. Some parents have received communications from school officials indicating that their children would not be grandfathered in unless their paperwork was submitted by April 27. The Governor signed the bill into law on April 28, so many understood that date to be the deadline. The following post was captured from a parent asking for clarification on a school nurse’s response regarding the confusing deadlines for paperwork.

Governor Lamont, according to Kraemer, has “boasted of his state’s vaccination rates” on multiple occasions. Lamont is on record as having been a strong proponent of opening vaccine clinics in high schools in anticipation of, at that time, a rumored push by the FDA to authorize the use of the Pfizer Bio-NTech vaccine for children ages 12-15. And, in fact, the authorization came on Monday, May 10. As reported by a May 3 Patch article, the Governor was quoted as having stated that such clinics and an “accompanying end-of-summer jab campaign” could be “very helpful in building confidence to get kids back into school in the fall.” 

A May 10 press conference that aired on the day of the FDA announcement confirms his wish to vaccinate children in that age group. The press conference also confirms his and his administration’s strong commitment to the vaccine as a way to protect the citizens of Connecticut.

Acting Commissioner of Education for the Connecticut State Department of Education, Charlene Russell-Tucker also spoke glowingly, saying she is “so thrilled” about the rate of vaccinations for 50 percent of 15 and 16 year-olds who are “standing together in line” to get the shots. She continued, saying that she is excited that 12 to 15-year-olds will now have access to the shots.

“There is something to be said about kids being able to gather together with their own peer pressure amongst each other to be able to stand in line and get their shots. So we are really excited about that to make sure families know—to make sure we have the approvals necessary so that kids are able to do that.”

Several parents and organizations have already filed one federal lawsuit against several state offices and boards of education to fight the removal of the religious exemption. A state lawsuit is in the works, according to Kraemer. Under the law, Connecticut became the sixth state, joining California, New York, Mississippi, W. Virginia, and Maine without a religious or comparable exemption, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.  

There is also a movement to reform HB6423; however, Kraemer does not think there is enough time to do that by the close of the legislative session on June 9. Parents, however, have awakened to the idea that they must, in the meantime, start thinking about becoming members of the Boards of Education and running for local office. She and many other parents fully expect that the Covid19 vaccine will be added to the list of mandated childhood vaccinations if Governor Lamont gets his way. An announcement from the Governor is said to be coming on Friday with guidance for the state’s schools.

The post Parents In Connecticut Want To Call The Shots appeared first on UncoverDC.

 

Much of the OSS world is critically underfunded yet critically important

It's been nearly five months since the SolarWinds hack came to light, causing lots of chin-scratching about vulnerabilities in the software supply chain.…

Dev team doesn’t have necessary hardware, and even if they could afford it eBay is empty

OpenSolaris ‘spork’ Illumos has decided to deprecate support for SPARC CPUs.…

GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward exposed what she called “breaking information” and “the big router lie” in her daily update Monday. She explains that “no software routers would be used, only hardware routers.” 

As reported on May 6 by UncoverDC, Maricopa county failed to deliver subpoenaed admin passwords and routers to the auditors for the ongoing Maricopa County forensic audit. Maricopa County Attorney Joseph LaRue wrote a letter to the liaison for the audit, Ken Bennett, on May 3. UncoverDC reported:

“The letter states that the Maricopa County attorney could not deliver the promised ‘virtual images’ of the routers because they could not adequately redact ‘confidential law enforcement data.’ According to the letter, there were also concerns that handing over the routers could put ‘sensitive, confidential data belonging to Maricopa County citizens such as health information and social security numbers.’”

Ward explains why this is a lie,

“Hardware routers are a separate, dedicated piece of equipment with fast networking and limited disk storage…Only the rawest of rookie network technicians would install additional applications and data files on a router…they are trained that a router is a single-purpose machine to used to route, used to route packets of data. A router would never be used as a database server because the disk storage would not support a database server, especially for an entity as large as Maricopa County…there is no danger when making a copy of the router hard drive.”

This may be true; however, the router would allow a user/hacker to access/deny ACLs (Access Control Lists) if they have any. This would indicate which range of IPs are allowed to access the router to make changes. If someone could gain access to a router, then they can do significant damage. It may be that Maricopa County is concerned with exposing the security protocols for the routers—which may expose vulnerabilities.

Notably, it seems that Dominion had sole access to the tabulators during the adjudication process in Maricopa County. It may be one reason Maricopa County does not have access to the admin passwords.

Testimony was given by Janice (Jan) Bryant during the Arizona Election Integrity Hearing on Nov. 30, 2020, and she indicated that only Dominion had access to the software on the tabulators. The full transcript of her testimony can be found here. In reference to the tabulation, Bryant said:

“So I’m, I was in the tabulation center six different days—day and night shifts. And no county employees, no IT people, no one else was touching any of the software. They (Dominion) did all the training for the adjudicators; they ran all the reports. And I brought this up on my very first day in the room. I said this doesn’t seem right, as a person with my background. Never in a million years would I turn my company’s most important things over to someone else. And there’s only two guys (Dominion’s Bruce & John), and they had whole control of everything.

I also participated in the (2%) random ballot selection for hand audit. Picking the ballots, you know, determining which bins we were going to select. And even that, Dominion ran the report for it (which bins to pull).”

UncoverDC spoke with Rep. Mark Finchem on Monday. Finchem was one of the prime organizers and interrogators for the Nov. 30 hearing. In fact, he had several questions for Bryant during the hearing. His observation is a pertinent one:

“The bigger questions are, I thought there was no internet access? And why was Dominion permitted to have access to them if there was sensitive law enforcement information in them?”

The post Maricopa County: The Big Router Lie appeared first on UncoverDC.

Back on November 30, 2020, Maricopa County elections witness Jan Bryant testified before the Arizona legislature.

Jan has a strong project management background. She could not believe what she witnessed during the 2020 election in Maricopa County, Arizona.

Jan said back on November 30, 2020, that Maricopa County officials DID NOT RUN THE ELECTION!  Dominion employees John and Bruce did.

Jan’s testimony might explain why Maricopa County officials do not have Admin passwords or access to the Dominion voting machines.

They never had them!

BREAKING… AZ Audit Director Ken Bennett: Dominion Refuses to Comply with Subpoena and Turn Over Password to Their Maricopa County Machines

Jan also testified under oath that county staff, not even IT staff were allowed access to the voting machines and that she witnessed Dominon employees with a laptop computer in the counting room.

Jan worked 6 days at MCTEC, has an MBA, and project management background in technology.

Transcribed Witness Text: Janice (Jan) Bryant
From Video Testimony here:
Captured 06:39:30 to 06:42:25
Nov. 30^th 2020 – AZ Legislature’s Election Fraud Hearing (Hyatt Hotel)

Jan Bryant: ….and back to my opening, I wanted to tell you that I do have a pretty strong project management technology background. This is not, I would say, everybody, raves about how we’ll run and how tight this room is that we were working in. I was in the (MCTEC) tabulation center. You know the glass (wall) and the servers in a glass room. All the computers are on a single cable that you can see. None of that matters because of two things. One, the Dominion employees were the only ones that were running any of that equipment.

So I’m, I was in the tabulation center six different days. Day and night shifts. And no county employees, no IT people, no one else was touching any of the software. They (Dominion) did all the training for the adjudicators, they ran all the reports. And so I brought this up on my very first day in the room. I said this doesn’t seem right, as a person with my background.  Never in a million years would I turn my company’s most important things over to someone else. And there’s only two guys (Dominion’s Bruce & John) and they had whole control of everything.

I also participated in the (2%) random ballot selection for hand audit. Picking the ballots, you know, determining which bins we were going to select. And even with that, Dominion ran the report for it (which bins to pull). So no one, I mean, they (Dominion) knew exactly what was in the hand audit boxes. That made me nervous also. And they also knew when we pulled the last box, which was probably eight days before they quit counting ballots. As a senior manager over big projects, never in a million years would I have allowed some of the stuff that I saw going on there.

RECAP: The exact bins to be pulled for the mandated 2% hand audit were decided by Dominion staff, using their EMS software, not randomly.

The other thing that I wanted to make sure. The final week that they were counting ballots, I came in on I think a Tuesday. When I had left the Friday before I did NOT notice there was a laptop in the room behind the (glass) wall, that “John” the Dominion employee was working on. When I came in on Tuesday and walked around where they were doing the hand entry of ballots, I noticed that laptop sitting there and John was working on it. It’s not a secure room if you’re bringing a laptop in and out of a room. Who knows what happened there. Every one of the 50 desktops that were in there had a row of USB ports on the side of it. So I get very angry when I hear some of our leader here saying “Oh, it’s secure, nothing can get in or out.”. That’s not true. I will tell you that is probably the biggest issue that I had.

Jan Bryant – Nov. 30^th Hearing.

The post Maricopa County Elections Witness Testifies that Dominion Ran Entire Election – County Officials and Observers NEVER HAD Access or Passwords! (Video) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Drone technology can't advance without infrastructure

Alex Krutz

May 08, 12:00 AM May 08, 12:00 AM

Only in the last few years has drone technology potentially become advanced enough to transport humans. That type of transport, called advanced air mobility, is the next transformative technology in aviation.

There are several categories of advanced air mobility, but the primary ones are cargo and human passenger transportation.

The cargo category is known as "unmanned aerial systems," which are autonomous vehicles such as drones. They have a variety of uses, including commercial and recreational filming activities and package delivery. In 2019, the federal government put advanced air mobility priorities in the federal budget for the first time, and that led to the Federal Aviation Administration starting to manage this new technology and activity through the National Airspace System. That allowed the FAA to issue an authorization to use UAS to Wing, a subsidiary of Google, to deliver packages to customers.

The category of passenger transportation is called "urban air mobility." It has just started to be developed with vehicles called "electric vertical takeoff and landing" aircraft. The eVTOL is being developed for passenger transport in high-density areas, underserved communities, and geographically rural communities. These vehicles are designed with a battery-powered rotor blade propulsion system. They're able to take off from a stationary position, fly for short ranges, and have a high level of automation using artificial intelligence.

There is now a global effort underway to develop the advanced air mobility market and capabilities. German companies such as Volocopter and Lilium are working on aerial ride-sharing services and air taxis. In South Korea, Hyundai is leading a public-private cooperation. In China, EHang is creating autonomous aerial capabilities.

In the United States, the major players are not the well-known aerospace companies but Silicon Valley technology companies that are filling the void by partnering with automotive companies with aspirations to bring urban air mobility vehicles to market. These are partnerships such as Uber Elevate with Hyundai and Joby Aviation with Toyota.

These entrants into the aviation sector lack the aerospace experience in working with the FAA on aviation infrastructure planning and certification requirements. That is why the government needs to step in to establish the infrastructure and industry guidelines to support this emerging technology. Regulation and certification will need to be developed for human transportation by eVTOL. To ensure safety and reliability, the FAA needs to play a central role with its established regulatory, testing, and certification process.

Initially, eVTOLs will be flown by trained operators or pilots, but eventual unmanned technology will be developed with AI-controlled collision avoidance systems. Traffic management systems, communication systems, and operator training will need to be addressed for this emerging market.

A physical infrastructure in cities and areas where eVTOLs will be used needs to have coordinated charging stations, landing pads, and repair stations. These things cannot happen by themselves. The government will have to play a central role in facilitating the advancement in this field, just like it did with the advancement of the automotive field.

It took the government more than 40 years from the time the automobile first started being produced to implement a national infrastructure of regulations and laws for automobiles. In order for eVTOLs to advance, the government does not have the luxury of taking that long. For the U.S. to continue being the global leader in this field, it needs to develop a national infrastructure for UAS alongside its technological advancement.

Highly regulated countries such as those in Asia and Europe are much better than the U.S. at quickly developing national infrastructure projects. They are already developing their infrastructures for eVTOLs. The U.S. has a golden opportunity with a new infrastructure bill being negotiated in Congress to ensure that advanced air mobility development continues. The development of infrastructure for eVTOLs, both physically and through FAA regulations, should now be fully funded to ensure that the U.S. remains a leader in this new frontier of technology.

Alex Krutz is the managing director at Patriot Industrial Partners, an aerospace and defense advisory firm that focuses on manufacturing strategy and supply chain optimization. 

© 2021 Washington Examiner

Biden Welcome sign on railroad overpass on I-10 in Metairie New Orleans         He is visiting New Orleans and Lake Charles today… Biden WELCOME sign on railroad overpass on I-10 in Metairie New Orleans. He will be visiting New Orleans and Lake Charles today #BidenBorderCrisis #BidensAmerica @JackPosobiec @RobManess pic.twitter.com/QdEqTbsUr8 — Sheepdog USMC […]

A group of scientists say they have found signs of life on Mars, with photos of fungi-like specimens resembling puffballs appearing to emerge from the soil on the red planet and increase in size.But other researchers said the evidence was speculative and far from enough to support the conclusion.In a paper accepted for publication in the journal Advances in Microbiology, the 11 researchers from various countries and institutions said an analysis of photos taken by previous Mars missions showed …

(Alexandria, VA) – May 5, 2021: Today, Facebook’s Oversight Board upheld its suspension of former President Trump. This disappointing decision should come as no surprise since big tech has proved time and time again that they will censor conservatives.   Following the election, big tech companies censored posts pertaining to election integrity. Just this week, […]

  Arizona Democrats, GOP settle over ballot review, audit will continue   Arizona Democrats won concessions Wednesday evening in settling their challenge to the Maricopa audit of 2.1 million ballots cast in the 2020 election, but they failed to block the review as they had sought.   The agreement orders Arizona Senate Republicans and Cyber Ninjas […]

Both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines require 2 doses, spaced 3 and 4 weeks respectively, to provide full immunity against COVID-19.

I feel compelled to write a letter to Rep. Liz Cheney regarding her statement from yesterday morning. Below I’ve attached a screenshot, so readers will understand what specific statement I’m referring to. I cannot simply let this pass without a response of my own. As a voter, as an American, as someone fighting for the future of our country, I have to respond. I have to respond on behalf of the tens of millions of voters who had their votes stolen. I have to respond on behalf of the political prisoners rounded up after people like Liz Cheney put the official stamp on a lie. I have to speak up on behalf of an angry America that has simply been pushed beyond its limits by elitist garbage like the self-entitled daughter of Dick Cheney, of all people.  Below is the statement I am referring to.

The 2020 presidential election was not stolen. Anyone who claims it was is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system.

— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) May 3, 2021

Liz, today I saw that you chose to open your mouth and respond to former President Trump, yet again. It has really become a habit for you to open your mouth and say something negative every time he speaks. You claimed that the stealing of the 2020 election was a big lie. We all know where this comes from; you are part of the party that saw him as an outsider and a threat to your power. You wanted the election rigged to remove that threat. We know it. You know it. The Democrats on the other side of the aisle know it (see what they’re doing about the Arizona audit). Their voters know it, too. Former President Trump is issuing statements that other people propagate on his behalf after he was de-platformed at the behest of people like you, and he is reaching tens of millions. Meanwhile, you run to CNN to mouth the Democrat slogans and talking points. Who is really fighting for We The People, Liz? Why do you hate the 75 Million Americans that voted to Make America Great Again? Most of us know the answer to that question already, but it would be good to hear you put your contemptuous thoughts about us on the record.

The “big lie” is that YOU are *one of us* and that we can trust you, not that the 2020 election was stolen. You’ve demonstrated that you only care about your own personal power and wealth and that you are a partner to the Left in suppressing Americans. You mouth off repeatedly on Democrat-friendly media outlets, and you avoid Conservative outlets and programs because you know that your duplicity won’t get a pass. Liz, if you were anything but a joke, you’d have the courage to go head-to-head and face-to-face with Dan Bongino, or Tucker Carlson, or someone like Tracy Beanz. You’d discuss the issues on the merits. The reality is, you show up on shows like Jake Tapper’s propaganda hour, and you repeat ad nauseum Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi’s talking points. You do so using Left wing outlets that will give you all the air time you want, and they give you that air time because your goals are the same.

Former President Trump is right, and there is overwhelming evidence to support his statements. Your own party in your home state Censured you and is rejecting you; meanwhile, Donald Trump is more popular and influential than ever. They Censured you because they know that the ‘Democratic System’ was already poisoned- by stealing an election and nullifying the votes of 75 million Americans who played by the rules and voted fairly, freely, and legally. They Censured you, Liz, because you spit in the face of those 75 million Americans you were sent to Washington to represent. They censured you because you betrayed them to win favor with the people who want us marginalized, silenced, and crushed. You know, the people who elected YOU.

Let me be clear, Liz: everyone sees you for the turncoat you ARE. No one is under any illusions about you. Former President Trump referenced your polling numbers. We all know what those numbers say. You aren’t going back to Washington. The thing that strikes me most is the strikingly opposite ways two women Representatives facing a tough re-election bid have decided to handle it; Cheri Bustos sees the writing on the wall and decided to walk away gracefully. She knows what’s coming and why. You aren’t as smart as Cheri– you chose to double down and dare the very people that she spat on and betrayed to remove her from office.  Challenge accepted, Liz. Challenge accepted.

Your continues truculence and lack of awareness notwithstanding, the end of your political career is rapidly approaching.  The voters you openly despise, and endlessly mock on DNC airwaves are going to make sure your career is over. But who knows, with all that DNC media limelight, maybe it’s the start of a burgeoning media career…

Maybe CNN will hire you.

The post An Open Letter to Soon to Be Ex-Rep Liz Cheney appeared first on UncoverDC.

"In a time of silence and lies, a beacon of freedom arises. A safe place to speak freely and safely straight from the desk of Donald J. Trump."

The post Trump Launches His Own Twitter-Like Platform on His Personal Website first appeared on Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion.