Ben Arcuri

Lobbyist. Labor/education policy wonk. Congressional procedure nerd. Girl dad. Husband to @realPOTUS2040. Views are my own.

[Freedom Foundation @FreedomFdtn]

Government unions sometimes act in their members' interests. Sometimes they don't.

Union bosses love to dress up their political ambitions as "union business" — leading to secretive spending and members left in the dark.

A new DOL rule finally demands real accountability.

[Russ Greene @GreenPlusAnE]

Total Boomer Luxury Communism is an existential threat to America. And this rhetoric below contributes to it.

Democrats want to take ~$25 trillion more in taxes on from younger workers, just because they think retired millionaire households deserve $100k plus a year. Note the language: "your social security."

Seniors, your social security doesn't exist anywhere. Your benefits are paid for by younger people's taxes, today. It's not "your social security" - it's "our payroll taxes."

Further, Dems want to jack up spending on Medicare and Medicaid, which means tens of trillions more in additional taxes on younger workers.

And we haven't talked about interest payments on the $39 trillion in national debt yet.

[FOX 4 NEWS @FOX4]

"TEXAS IS GOOD EVERYTHING IS BIG"

[Ben Arcuri @ArcuriBen]

@BarredinDC Tallboy right now

[Scott Lincicome @scottlincicome]

Video reviewed "simulation" diving penalty is awesome.

[Ben Arcuri @ArcuriBen]

@OldRowSwig This should be the only person allowed to play the recorder after the age of 12

[Dilan Esper @dilanesper]

Sabrina Carpenter went to see Rush. Taylor Swift went to see the Knicks.

Advantage: Sabrina.

[Ben Arcuri @ArcuriBen]

Disappointed every time I see this and remember it's not a delicious local hot dog place

[Henry Hook @HenryHook182114]

@AndrewSolender i’ve already got a favorite

[Noah Smith 🐇���🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @Noahpinion]

We just decided to stop teaching everyone math, in the hopes that this would make society equal because everyone would be equally incompetent

[Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @Noahpinion]

The progressive idea of "Let's make everyone equal at math by just not making anyone learn math" is going just about as well as you'd expect

[Steve McGuire @sfmcguire79]

A new report shows that 30% of Berkeley Calculus students are severely underprepared.

These students have “non-passing rates as high as 46%.”

From 2021-2023, “over 800 students (or 24% of the total population) did not pass their Calculus I classes.” Of the 500 among them who were tested for proficiency,

“-63.6% came from the proficiency tier with severe preparation deficiency (0-2);
-30.2% came from the proficiency tier of underprepared students (3-6);
-6.2% came from the proficiency tier of prepared students (7-8).”

“Obscuring these preparation gaps does not provide access; it provides a near-guaranteed introduction to failure for our most vulnerable students.”

[Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @Noahpinion]

They did, it was called America

[Daniel 🧮 @dunisayno]

enough time has passed… we’re ready

[Neal McCluskey @NealMcCluskey]

Not the worst treatment of school choice, but beware simple origin stories:

"Vouchers were popularized in the 1950s as a way for white families to self-segregate following the Brown v. Board of Education decision."

The choice movement long precedes that:
https://t.co/XwQp2xJcbu

[Billy Binion @billybinion]

I’m so tired of this talking point. Tom Steyer is running for governor of California, which spent $20,000 *per student* in 2023. That’s double what the state spent just 10 years ago. And yet test scores are *declining.* The idea that we don’t “invest in schools” is a myth.

[regular guy @regularguyguns]

Maybe you wonder why I, a mere gun blog, makes a big deal about Flock and similar tech?

OK here’s a real world situation that can easily happen and has likely happened.

Unfortunately to drive on public roads without getting hassled by the cops, your car needs a license plate. That’s tied to you, the owner of the vehicle.

Flock isn’t just a traffic camera, it’s an AI/ML enabled (wait for it) flock of cameras that transmit all their video and audio to the mothership. Not a government server somewhere but, to keep it simple, a big giant cloud computer instance owned and run by Flock, the company.

Government users, as well as Flock employees here in the US and overseas, can log in and query the system based on license plate number or even vehicle description and get a full history of that vehicle’s movements throughout the Flock network over multiple jurisdictions. Someone in New York can track a car from Armonk all the way to Homestead FL if they feel like it from the comfort of their desk.

On a daily level, someone can get a pretty accurate picture of someone’s life just by monitoring their movements via Flock. And I’m using this example to rattle the cage of the “back the blue unconditionally” crowd in 2A.

OK - your car has license plate ABC 123 - and Flock knows this. Someone can enter your tag in Flock and see what you are doing on a daily basis. You leave your home where the neighborhood is under the Flock panopticon. Flock sees you drive to Dunkin’ on Main Street, then you drop your kid off at XYZ Daycare. Then you go to work at the local IT consulting firm in ZZZ industrial park. You go pick up a quick deli sandwich for lunch at Food Lion. You go back to work. On the way home you stop off at Bob’s Guns, and stay for 20 minutes while buying some ammo. Then you go home. Everywhere there’s a Flock camera.

Now Flock knows the following about you:

- You live at 123 Wisteria Lane
- Your kid is in daycare (means he’s likely under 5)
- You work at ZZZ
- You go cheap on lunch
- You own at least one gun

Your license plate is tied to you so they now have your name and assumed-to-be-private details of your life, like that you are armed.

On the reverse of that, the Flock camera outside of Bob’s Guns has been recording the plates of everyone going into the parking lot. No need for a firearms registry when Flock is doing the work.

All of this is done without a warrant and the data is available to anyone with a certain level of access to the system, whether it’s a cop, or a Flock technician in the Philippines. FYI Flock uses overseas contractors for support and AI annotation.

The 2018 Carpenter decision at SCOTUS ruled that pervasive surveillance where one can divine private details of someone’s life is a 4th Amendment violation in absence of a specific warrant.

Flock is illegal, unconstitutional and immoral.

And a danger to everyone, not just gun owners.

[Jeremiah Johnson 🌐 @JeremiahDJohns]

Public sector unions are bad.

These unions are not negotiating against billionaires or some convenient cartoon villain. They're rent seeking and negotiating against taxpayers, and they'll shut down vital infrastructure if we don't humor their tantrum.

[Kelsey Piper @KelseyTuoc]

In the Argument today, Nicholas Bagley and Robert Gordon argue that Democrats have a public sector unions problem: if you want good results, you have to be able to hire the best people and fire the worst ones.

[Richard Morrison @RichardMorrison]

Currently, state and local government agencies are run primarily as jobs programs for their employees rather than ways to deliver actual government services to citizens and taxpayers. If you're not willing to change that, you're not serious about reform.