China’s AI Sputnik surprises

January 31, 2025

This week, China shocked the West with its announcement of DeepSeek, an artificial intelligence network capable of competing with OpenAI, Meta and Google. The fact that China was able to develop DeepSeek without a heavy supply of sophisticated microchips from Nvidia sent Nvidia stock spiraling, along with the other major tech companies in the United States: China seems to have cracked the code to bringing down the cost of AI development radically, in the process ending-around sanctions against their access to those microchips. In the words of former Intel Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger, ...

With Trump, I’m mad as hell

January 31, 2025

What Trump is doing is not normal. During the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, Daniel Rodriguez plunged a stun gun into the neck of a police officer multiple times. Judge Amy Berman Jackson said Rodriguez was “a one-man army of hate, attacking police and destroying property” as she sentenced him to a prison term of over 12 years. On his first day in office, Trump pardoned Rodriguez and over 1,500 others for their actions on Jan. 6. Pardoning those who attack police officers while storming the Capitol is not normal. Trump tapped Pete Hegseth as defense secretary to ...

Residents desire more franchise restaurants, stores — and they may get some

January 31, 2025

ALPENA — Over the past several years, the list of franchise stores and restaurants in Alpena has grown, but people in the area still express interest in other things they would like to see developed locally. Target, Olive Garden, Buffalo Wild Wings, Panera Bread, TJ Maxx, Kohl’s, and ...

Party unity is no easy feat

January 30, 2025

Donald Trump has long complained that Democrats are better at sticking together than Republicans are. He’s already revisited this gripe. In meetings with Republican leaders from the House and Senate and with the House Freedom Caucus, he reportedly insisted that Republicans need to be unified the way Democrats are. Whether it’s true that Democrats are better at sticking together than Republicans is debatable, particularly given that, not too long ago, the Democratic Party defenestrated a sitting president seeking re-election. What is more interesting, and ominous, is President ...

Trump’s 1st week, the real story

January 30, 2025

The New York Times describes Trump as leading “a global wave of hard-line conservative populism.” Rubbish. What Trump is undertaking has nothing whatever to do with conservatism, which is about conserving institutions and shrinking the size of government. And it has nothing to do with populism, which is about confronting elites. Trump is leading a move to replace democracy with oligarchy. He’s implementing a plan to make the wealthiest people in America far wealthier and more powerful, including Trump himself, and to turn American democracy into a giant corporation run by ...

Programs at Head Start negligent, mismanaged

January 30, 2025

Head Start has been something of a sacred cow in Washington since its creation in 1965. The $12.3 billion federal program provides pre-school services to nearly 790,000 low-income children each year. But a report released last week by the Government Accountability Office reveals serious negligence and fiscal mismanagement in Head Start, putting at risk the very children the program claims to help. The report studies Head Start programs that are operating under interim management, meaning those whose former managers—usually local agencies or nonprofits—gave up or lost their federal ...