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Former Obama administration official Brandon Friedman claimed opposition to the IRS is racist following renewed attacks against the agency on Sunday.

On Twitter, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, tweeted out, "Happy Sunday. Abolish the IRS," as a joke to his followers. Friedman fired back that this anger against the IRS is not just based on political bias but on the agencys racial history.

"Republicans don't just hate the IRS because it pays for things like highways and social security. There's history here. They hate what it represents. The IRS was created in 1862 specifically to fund the Civil War, to end slavery and to burn white supremacy to the ground," Friedman tweeted.

He added, "Abolish the IRS may sound like an innocuous anti-tax message, but it's literally a call to defund the U.S. military. The same military that crushed secessionists the first time. It's a fundamentally anti-government message. The insurrection continues."

This photo taken April 13, 2014 shows the headquarters of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in Washington. (AP Photo/J. David Ake)

MY IRS AUDIT FROM HELL, OVER A SMALL BOAT AND THE FOLLY OF 87,000 NEW AGENTS

Twitter users blasted Friedmans take, calling it "incredibly stupid" and "exceptionally dumb."

"Dumbest tweet I've seen today," former FEC Commissioner Brad Smith tweeted.

Journalist Kimberly Morin wrote, "Here in the wilds of Twitter we have yet another example of an incredibly stupid and ignorant tweet by an incredibly stupid and ignorant left-wing a--hole. #TaxationIsTheft coward."

"When I think of the IRS, I think, Dang nabbit, my great-great-great-great-grandpappy lost his eye in the Civil War. We must avenge his eye by not paying our taxes! The Lafayette Co. President Ellen Carmichael joked.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO)confirmed to Fox News that the IRS will need to raise the number of audits towards citizens earning less than $400,000. (iStock)

RealClearInvestigations senior writer Mark Hemingway explained, "The IRS was then used to fund the Union Army warring with Indians for the next several decades, presumably as part of that same quest to combat white supremacy."

"This is exceptionally dumb, of course. But it's also quite telling that leftists believe the IRS is the one that pays for stuff," The Federalist senior editor David Harsanyi wrote.

Conservative commentator Chad Felix Greene tweeted, "How are you possibly this embarrassingly ignorant?"

NEW YORK TIMES REPORT BLASTS REPUBLICANS FOR UNFOUNDED CONSPIRACY THEORIES ABOUT INCREASED IRS ENFORCEMENT

The IRS came under Republican criticism recently after it was discovered that President Bidens Inflation Reduction Act would include a massive expansion of the agency, including 87,000 new employees over the next ten years.

Despite reports from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that confirmed this expansion would require raising audits on citizens earning under $400,000 per year, mainstream media outlets have largely called conservative concerns "unfounded."

President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act will double the IRS workforce over the next ten years. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

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Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler further attacked GOP lawmakers on Aug. 18 for "preying on peoples fears" on the IRS.

Lindsay Kornick is an associate editor for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to lindsay.kornick@fox.com and on Twitter: @lmkornick.

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Former Obama official suggests GOP opposes IRS because it was created to end slavery, burn White supremacy - Fox News

It may be hard to recall these days when a Democratic White House proudly rejects any guiderails from things such as economics or the Constitution. But back in the Obama years, they considered themselves the wonks. And Obamacare was supposed to be the triumph of the wonks.

As the law aged, its rickety construction became clearer, which is why most of the top-tier Democratic presidential candidates in 2020 ran on replacing Obamacare. Among other problems, the bills pay-fors, the revenue enhancements that would supposedly dampen the law's effects on the deficit and on inflation, all evaporated.

More specifically, Democrats repealed them, showing that they never really intended for the bill to reduce healthcare spending or pay for itself.

The CLASS ACT was a Ted Kennedy brainchild, creating national long-term care insurance. Democrats included it in Obamacare, and it was actually called a revenue raiser supposedly raising $87 billion over 10 years, because people would be paying premiums, and the benefits wouldnt go out the door until mostly after the 10-year window on which budget analyses are done.

It was a horrible idea, of course, and it was scrapped. That imaginary $87 billion in savings, however, was part of what allowed Obama and congressional Democrats to pretend the law was "paid for."

Another abandoned revenue raiser in Obamacare was an absurd and intrusive tax hike. The 1099 provision would have forced freelancers to file 1099s for almost any business transaction, such as buying equipment or hiring a repairman. Congress repealed that awful provision.

Obamacares Medical Device Tax was repealed. I wrote in 2013 about another false pay-for that Obama delayed: Obamacare was supposed to save money by cutting Medicare Advantage spending cuts would have become apparent last autumn. But the law also allowed HHS to run demonstration programs in Medicare, experiments to find new ways to improve care and reduce costs. So, Obama used most of that demonstration program money to postpone Medicare Advantage cuts until after the 2012 elections.

And now, yet another Obamacare pay-for has been gutted by Biden. Check out this video from back in the day:

Got it? By nationalizing the student lending industry, which previously had federal guarantees for private banks, Obamacare would raise $58 billion in revenue over a decade.

Some Democrats promised even more. Part of the Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act of 2010 will make key changes to the student loan industry, Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) said. This measure will save taxpayers nearly $70 billion over 10 years.

So to all the other ways in which this student loan bailout is objectionable, here is another one. It is yet another abandonment of the lies used to sell Obamacare. Of all the bogus claims that it paid for itself, this is only the latest to fall apart.

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Long-term con: Obamacare was paid for by nationalizing student loans - Washington Examiner

Marcus Baram| Capital & Main

Six years after President Obamas ambitious attempt to expand overtime to millions of Americans was vigorously opposed by the business lobby and struck down by a conservative judge in Texas, President Biden is about to take another swing at the issue. And this time, its expected to face even stronger opposition due to a more divisive environment and the growing clout of a powerful new adversary gig economy giants like Uber and DoorDash.

The Department of Labor is intensively working on a proposal it plans to introduce in October. The proposal is widely expected to increase the cap that currently bars overtime for salaries from just above $35,000 to more than $50,000. It may also more narrowly define the exemptions that have long kept employees from earning time and a half enabling many more full-time salaried Americans to qualify for overtime.

The rule was expected to be introduced in April, but was pushed back to this fall while an army of lawyers and statisticians labor to make sure that it can withstand legal challenges from the business community.

It remains unclear how far the administration will go to overhaul the salary cap in general, full-time salaried workers currently have to earn less than $35,568 per year to qualify for overtime and the overtime threshold has not been updated in recent decades to keep pace with the cost of living and skyrocketing health care and housing costs. Sources close to the agency say that the Department of Labor may align the overtime rules closer to Californias standards for its workforce the states threshold for overtime is currently $62,400 for employers with at least 26 employees and $58,240 for employers with fewer than 26 employees and tighten the administrative exemption, which has been used to disqualify low wage fast food managers from earning overtime.

The Labor Departments current effort is heavily influenced by Obamas failed attempt to double the salary cap from $23,000 to almost $47,000, which was overturned by a federal judge in the final weeks of his presidency. At the time, the opposition to the rule was led by Republican lawmakers and industry lobbyists who argued that it would burden small businesses with extra costs.

This time around, the battle could prove to be even more intense, says David Weil, the architect of Obamas overtime overhaul whose nomination by Biden to the same post in his administration was shot down by Republican lawmakers and a few moderate Democrats Arizona Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin. Key to swaying those Democrats votes was the International Franchise Association, whose president, Matt Haller, told Politico that it sent a steady drumbeat of CEOs and franchisees virtually into Manchins, Sinemas and Kellys offices. During Weils confirmation hearings, the gig companies advocacy group App-Based Work Alliance pushed out tweets claiming that Weil supported an outdated workforce model that was rejected by gig workers who love their flexibility and independence.

Weeks after the vote, Haller crowed on the IFAs site that it was the first time since 1989 [that] a federal appointees confirmation was defeated on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

That battle could foreshadow a bitter fight over the overtime proposals. What was different [from the Obama-era debate] was an intense ground game focused on a few wavering Democrats and new players in the business lobby the platform companies like Uber and DoorDash who helped strengthen the existing players who are very much in opposition to anyone who they feel will be more vigilant in enforcing the law, says Weil. It was intense and hostile. It is a tougher environment.

The gig economy giants are fiercely opposed to laws that would extend labor protections like overtime to their armies of workers. DoorDash, Gopuff, Grubhub, HopSkipDrive, Instacart, Lyft, Shipt and Uber launched a new lobbying group called Flex in March. Those same companies collectively spent more than $6 million on lobbying last year with a focus on labor issues. Also in their sights is a long delayed Biden proposal to reverse a Trump era rule that made it easier for employers to classify workers as independent contractors rather than employees which prevents them from qualifying for labor protections like overtime and minimum wage. The Trump rule is estimated to cost workers more than $3.7 billion annually, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

In addition, longtime industry heavyweights like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the International Franchise Association are actively pressuring the agency on the overtime rule and spending money to wield their influence. In the first half of this year, the Chamber spent almost $16 million and the Business Roundtable spent almost $5 million lobbying members of Congress and federal agencies on a wide array of issues, including the overtime rule. In vigorously opposing Weils nomination, the Chamber sent a letter to several lawmakers last January to express its concern that Weil would again seek to unnecessarily raise this salary threshold.

Arrayed on the other side and pushing for expanded overtime protections are EPI, the National Employment Law Project, unions and progressive lawmakers such as Sherrod Brown, Democratic senator from Ohio.

Weil, who now teaches at Brandeis University, is confident that the administration can deliver. Whats key, he says, is to reach out to all the stakeholders from employers and the business lobby to unions and worker advocates throughout the process. You can do it in a way that protects more workers and is legally defensible and economically sustainable.

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US President Joe Biden could expand overtime for millions - Visalia Times-Delta and Tulare Advance-Register

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Baidu is the latest entrant in the quantum computing race, which has been ongoing for years among both big tech and startups. Nevertheless, quantum computing may face a trough of disillusionment as practical applications remain far from reality.

Last week, Baidu unveiled its first quantum computer, coined Qian Shi, as well as what it claimed is the worlds first all-platform integration solution, called Liang Xi. The quantum computer is based on superconducting qubits, which is one of the first types of qubits, among many techniques that have been investigated, that became widely adopted, most notably in the quantum computer which Google used to proclaim quantum supremacy.

Qian Shi has a computing power of 10 high-fidelity qubits. High fidelity refers to low error rates. According to the Department of Energys Office of Science, once the error rate is less than a certain threshold i.e., about 1% quantum error correction can, in theory, reduce it even further. Beating this threshold is a milestone for any qubit technology, according to the DOEs report.

Further, Baidu said it has also completed the design of a 36-qubit chip with couplers, which offers a way to reduce errors. Baidu said its quantum computer integrates both hardware, software and applications. The software-hardware integration allows access to quantum chips via mobile, PC and the cloud.

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Moreover, Liang Xi, Baidu claims, can be plugged into both its own and third-party quantum computers. This may include quantum chips built on other technologies, with Baidu giving a trapped ion device developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences as an example.

With Qian Shi and Liang Xi, users can create quantum algorithms and use quantum computing power without developing their own quantum hardware, control systems or programming languages, said Runyao Duan, director of the Institute for Quantum Computing at Baidu Research. Baidus innovations make it possible to access quantum computing anytime and anywhere, even via smartphone. Baidus platform is also instantly compatible with a wide range of quantum chips.

Despite Baidus claim of being the worlds first such solution, the Liang Xi platform is reminiscent of Israels Innovation Authority approach, which is also aimed at being compatible with various types of qubits.

Although this is Baidus first quantum computer, the company has already submitted over 200 patents throughout the last four years since the founding of its quantum computing research institute. The patents span various areas of research including quantum algorithms and applications, communications and networks, encryption and security, error correction, architecture, measurement and control and chip design.

Baidu claims its offering paves the way for the industrialization of quantum computing, making it the latest company to make grandiose claims about quantum computing being on the verge of widespread adoption. Some quantum startups have already amassed staggering valuations of over $1 billion.

However, real applications for quantum computers, besides encryption, have yet to emerge. And even if they do, its expected that those will require thousands, which is far from what has anyone yet been able to achieve. For example, this scalability concern led Intel to stop pursuing the popular superconducting qubit approach in favor of the less mature silicon and silicon-germanium qubits, which are based on transistor-like structures that can be manufactured using traditional semiconductor equipment.

Nevertheless, voices are already emerging to warn of overhyping the technology. In the words of the Gartner Hype Cycle, this may mean that quantum computing may approach its trough of disillusionment.

The other main challenge in quantum computing is that real qubits tend to be too noisy, leading to decoherence This leads to the necessity of using quantum error correction, which increases the number of qubits far above the theoretical minimum for a given application. A solution called noisy intermediate scale quantum (NISQ) has been proposed as a sort of midway, but its success has yet to be shown.

The history of classical computers is filled with examples of applications that the technology enabled that had never been thought of beforehand. This makes it tempting to think that quantum computing may similarly revolutionize civilization. However, most approaches for qubits currently rely on near-absolute zero temperature. This inherent barrier implies quantum computing may remain limited to enterprises.

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How reality gets in the way of quantum computing hype - VentureBeat

It is perhaps not surprising that the big cloud providers a poor term really have jumped into quantum computing. Amazon, Microsoft Azure, Google, and their like have steadily transformed into major technology developers, no doubt in service of their large cloud services offerings. The same is true internationally. You may not know, for example, that Chinas cloud giants Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent also all have significant quantum development initiatives.

The global cloud crowd tends to leave no technology stone unturned and quantum was no different. Now the big players are all-in. At Amazon, most of the public attention has centered on Braket, its managed quantum services offering that provides tools for learning and access to a variety of quantum computers. Less well-known are Amazons Quantum Solutions Lab, Center for Quantum Computing, and Center for Quantum Networking, the last just launched in June. These four initiatives capture the scope of AWSs wide-ranging quantum ambitions, which include building a fault-tolerant quantum computer.

HPCwire recently talked with Simone Severini, director, quantum computing, AWS, about its efforts. A quantum physicist by training, Severini has been with AWS for ~ four years. He reports to AWSs overall engineering chief, Bill Vass. Noting that theres not much evidence that NISQ era systems will provide decisive business value soon, Severini emphasized quantum computing is a long-term bet. Now is the time for watching, learning, and kicking the tires on early systems.

Amazon Braket provides a huge opportunity for doing that. Customers can keep an eye on the dynamics of the evolution of this technology. We believe theres really not a single path to quantum computing. Its very, very early, right. This is a point that I like to stress, said Severini. I come from academia and have been exposed to quantum computing, one way or another, for over two decades. Its amazing to see the interest in the space. But we also need to be willing to set the right expectations. Its definitely very, very early still in quantum computing.

Launched in 2019, AWS describes Braket as a fully managed quantum computing service designed to help speed up scientific research and software development for quantum computing. This is not unlike what most big quantum computer makers, such D-Wave, IBM and Rigetti also provide.

The premise is to provide all the quantum tools and hardware infrastructure required for new and more experienced quantum explorers to use on a pay-as-you-go basis. Indeed, in the NISQ era, many believe such portal offerings are the only realistic way to deliver quantum computing. Cloud providers (and other concierge-like service providers such Strangeworks, for example) have the advantage of being able to provide access to several different systems.

With Braket, said Severini, Users dont have to sign contracts. Just go there, and you have everything you need to see whats going on [in quantum computing], to program or to simulate, and to use quantum computers directly. We have multiple devices with different [qubit] technologies on the service. The hope is that on one side, customers can indeed keep an eye on the technology on the other side, researchers can run experiments and hopefully contribute to knowledge as well contribute to science.

Braket currently offers access to quantum computers based on superconducting, trapped ion, photonic, and quantum annealers. Presumably other qubit technologies, cold atoms for example, will be added over time.

Interestingly, Braket is also a learning tool for AWS. Its an important exercise for us as well, because in this way, we can envision how quantum computers one day, would really feed a complex, cloud based infrastructure. Today, the workloads on Braket are all experimental, but for us, its important to learn things like security or operator usability, and the management of resources that we do for customers, said Severini. This is quite interesting, because in the fullness of time, a quantum computer could be used together with a lot of other classical resources, including HPC.

On the latter point, there is growing belief that much of quantum computing may indeed become a hybrid effort with some pieces of applications best run on quantum computers and other parts best run on classical resources. Well see. While it is still early days for the pursuit of hybrid classical-quantum computing, AWS launched Amazon Braket Hybrid late year. Heres an excerpt of AWSs description:

Amazon Braket Hybrid Jobs enables you to easily run hybrid quantum-classical algorithms such as the Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE) and the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA), that combine classical compute resources with quantum computing devices to optimize the performance of todays quantum systems. With this new feature, you only have to provide your algorithm script and choose a target device a quantum processing unit (QPU) or quantum circuit simulator. Amazon Braket Hybrid Jobs is designed to spin up the requested classical resources when your target quantum device is available, run your algorithm, and release the instances after completion so you only pay for what you use. Braket Hybrid Jobs can provide live insights into algorithm metrics to monitor your algorithm as it progresses, enabling you to make adjustments more quickly. Most importantly, your jobs have priority access to the selected QPU for the duration of your experiment, putting you in control, and helping to provide faster and more predictable execution.

To run a job with Braket Hybrid Jobs, you need to first define your algorithm using either the Amazon Braket SDK orPennyLane. You can also use TensorFlow and PyTorch or create a custom Docker container image. Next, you create a job via the Amazon Braket API or console, where you provide your algorithm script (or custom container), select your target quantum device, and choose from a variety of optional settings including the choice of classical resources, hyper-parameter values, and data locations. If your target device is a simulator, Braket Hybrid Jobs is designed to start executing right away. If your target device is a QPU, your job will run when the device is available and your job is first in the queue. You can define custom metrics as part of your algorithm, which can be automatically reported to Amazon CloudWatch and displayed in real time in the Amazon Braket console. Upon completion, Braket Hybrid Jobs writes your results to Amazon S3 and releases your resources.

The second initiative, Amazon Quantum Solution Lab, is aimed at collaborative research programs; it is, in essence, Amazons professional quantum services group.

They engage in research project with customers. For example, they recently wrote a paper with a team of researchers at Goldman Sachs. They run a very interesting initiative together with BMW Group, something called the BMW Group quantum computing challenge. BMW proposed four areas related to their interests, like logistic, manufacturing, some stuff that related to automotive engineering, and there was a call for a proposal to crowdsource solutions that use quantum computers to address these problems, said Severini.

There were 70 teams, globally, that submitted solutions. I think this is very interesting because [its still early days] and the fact is that quantum computers are not useful in business problems today. They cant [yet] be more impactful than classical computing today. An initiative of this type can really help bridge the real world with the theory. We have several such initiatives, he said.

Building a Fault-Tolerant Computer

Amazons efforts to build a fault-tolerant quantum are based at the AWS Center for Quantum Computing, located in Pasadena, Calif., and run in conjunction with Caltech. We launched this initiative in 2019 but last year, in 2021, we opened a building that we built inside the campus of Caltech, said Severini. Its a state of the art research facility and we are doing research to build an error-corrected, fault tolerant computer, he said.

AWS has settled on semiconductor-based superconducting qubit technology, citing the deep industry knowledge of semiconductor manufacturing techniques and scalability. The challenge, of course, is achieving fault-tolerance. Todays NISQ systems are noisy and error-prone and require near-zero Kelvin temperatures. Severini said simply, There is a lot of scientific challenges still and theres a lot of engineering to be done.

We believe strongly that there are two things that need to be done at this stage. One is improving error rates at the physical level and to invest in material science to really understand on a fundamental level how to build components that have an improvement in with respect to error rates. The second point is [to develop] new qubit architectures for protecting qubits from errors, he said.

This facility includes everything [to do] that. We are doing the full stack. Were building everything ourselves from software to the architecture to the qubits, and the wiring. These are long-term investments, said Severini.

AWS has been relatively quiet in promoting its quantum computer building effort. It has vigorously embraced competing qubit technologies on Braket, and Severini noted that its still unclear how progress will unfold. Some approaches may work well for a particular application but not for others. AWS is tracking all of them, and is including some prominent quantum researchers. For example, John Preskill, the Caltech researcher who coined the term NISQ, is an Amazon Scholar. (Preskill, of course, is fittingly the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology.)

Last February, AWS published a paper in PRX Quantum (Building a fault-tolerant quantum computer using concatenated cat codes) which outlines directional thinking. The abstract is excerpted below:

We present a comprehensive architectural analysis for a proposed fault-tolerant quantum computer based on cat codes concatenated with outer quantum error-correcting codes. For the physical hardware, we propose a system of acoustic resonators coupled to superconducting circuits with a two-dimensional layout. Using estimated physical parameters for the hardware, we perform a detailed error analysis of measurements and gates, includingcnotand Toffoli gates. Having built a realistic noise model, we numerically simulate quantum error correction when the outer code is either a repetition code or a thin rectangular surface code.

Our next step toward universal fault-tolerant quantum computation is a protocol for fault-tolerant Toffoli magic state preparation that significantly improves upon the fidelity of physical Toffoli gates at very low qubit cost. To achieve even lower overheads, we devise a new magic state distillation protocol for Toffoli states. Combining these results together, we obtain realistic full-resource estimates of the physical error rates and overheads needed to run useful fault-tolerant quantum algorithms. We find that with around 1000 superconducting circuit components, one could construct a fault-tolerant quantum computer that can run circuits, which are currently intractable for classical computers. Hardware with 18000 superconducting circuit components, in turn, could simulate the Hubbard model in a regime beyond the reach of classical computing.

The latest big piece of Amazons quantum puzzle is the AWS Center for Quantum Networking, located in Boston. AWS says major news about the new center is forthcoming soon. The quantum networking center, said Severini, is focused on hardware, software, commercial and scientific applications. That sounds like a lot and is perhaps in keeping with Amazons ambitious quantum programs overall.

The proof of all these efforts, as the saying goes, will be in the pudding.

Stay tuned.

Feature Image:A microwave package encloses the AWS quantum processor. The packaging is designed to shield the qubits from environmental noise while enabling communication with the quantum computers control systems. Source: AWS

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AWS Takes the Short and Long View of Quantum Computing - HPCwire