Articles tagged: government
Thursday, 15 July, 2010. Tagged with: government, links, software, travel
Why governing Americans is so hard
Howard Gleckman in the Christian Science Monitor:
The conventional wisdom is that Americans are fed up with their government. But our demands on policymakers are so inconsistent and irrational that we make governing nearly impossible. We hate big deficits, but oppose the actual tax increases or spending cuts that we need to dam the flood of the red ink. We are furious that government passed an $800 billion stimulus last year, but feel lawmakers are not doing enough to get the economy going. We want government to “do something” about the gulf oil spill but reject government interference in private business.
…
We are, collectively, four. We want what we want, and we want it now. And we want somebody else to pay for it.
Why your plane is always full
James Fallows:
… I got up before 5:30am today to get an 8:15am flight out of Dulles, only to find an email from the airline saying that the flight had been delayed to 10:45. The inbound flight – from Dubai! – is late, and there are no spare planes to go on to San Francisco. OK – gladder to know now than before leaving the house for the airport, though ideally it would have great to know last night. Nothing to be done. But it was a serendipitous intro to the very next item in the email inbox: a report on how substantially airline capacity continues to be cut. There just are fewer flights anywhere, and more of them are full, than in yesteryear.
Microsoft opens source code to Russian secret service
Tom Espiner, ZDNet UK:
Microsoft has signed a deal to open its Windows 7 source code up to the Russian intelligence services.
Russian publication Vedomosti reported on Wednesday that Microsoft had also given the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) access to Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft Office 2010 and Microsoft SQL Server source code, with hopes of improving Microsoft sales to the Russian state.
The agreement will allow state bodies to study the source code and develop cryptography for the Microsoft products through the Science-Technical Centre ‘Atlas’, a government body controlled by the Ministry of Communications and Press, according to Vedomosti.
(via Bruce Schneier)
Tuesday, 05 January, 2010. Tagged with: food-safety, government, technological failure, unintendedconsequences
I love red meat, and I’m getting tired of reading of how utterly disgusting the industrial process of raising cows, slaughtering them and processing meat is.
Michael Moss writing for the New York Times:
Eight years ago, federal officials were struggling to remove potentially deadly E. coli from hamburgers when an entrepreneurial company from South Dakota came up with a novel idea: injecting beef with ammonia.
The company, Beef Products Inc., had been looking to expand into the hamburger business with a product made from beef that included fatty trimmings the industry once relegated to pet food and cooking oil. The trimmings were particularly susceptible to contamination, but a study commissioned by the company showed that the ammonia process would kill E. coli as well as salmonella.
Officials at the United States Department of Agriculture endorsed the company’s ammonia treatment, and have said it destroys E. coli “to an undetectable level.” They decided it was so effective that in 2007, when the department began routine testing of meat used in hamburger sold to the general public, they exempted Beef Products.
I am blown away that a company selling a food product with a well-established pathogen hazard gets a pass on inspection.
Back in October, Moss had another piece about E. coli in tainted hamburger that’s also well-worth reading.
A big part of the solution is knowing and insisting on knowing where your food comes from and how it got there. If you’re committed to eating red meat, find a local butcher, a supermarket like Whole Foods that grinds their hamburger in-store without byproduct or get a Kitchen Aid attachment and grind your own.
Friday, 31 July, 2009. Tagged with: apple, government, iphone
The FCC is looking into Apple’s rejection of Google Voice from the App Store and post-release removal of other Google Voice apps.
Apple has iPhone developer trouble brewing and there are several reconsidering their commitment to iPhone application development. Mint and Fever developer Shaun Inman suggested an App Store reviewer was “practicing malicious compliance.”
Developers are pounding Apple from one side. User are on the other, with AT&T coverage in major cities getting worse. San Francisco sounds like iPhone utility is about nil on 3G, Austin’s AT&T coverage during SxSW fell apart. AT&T hasn’t announced tethering or MMS plans yet, roughly two months after WWDC.
Setting aside some of the truly moronic app denials and that any app accessing the Internet now has to be marked as 17+ in the App Store, what if Apple is done with AT&T’s exclusivity in the US? What if there was a non-trivial amount of time to run on the contract, but Apple can’t force AT&T into a better network upgrade timetable. What if instead of (or only) playing hardball in negotiating extensions to AT&T’s exclusivity, Apple decided to give AT&T exactly everything AT&T asked for with regard to preserving the network, as it is now.
If AT&T decides an app is potentially harmful – whether or not the same app runs on BlackBerries – it tells Apple to pull the app. Apple looks at the contract and says, “Fine, here you go.” That happens enough and sure enough the FCC starts asking questions. Apple points to the contract and says, “These are the terms and conditions we feel we need to stay in compliance with.”
I have two questions. Can the FCC void the contract or decree that Apple must also support the iPhone on another GSM carrier (T-Mobile)? Would Apple play this strategy in the hope that AT&T would request an app to be pulled that would trigger an inquiry?
I presume the FCC has some regulatory authority to cure a competitive deficit, and it looks like they’re interested in doing so. From all appearances, Apple’s pissed, but, if it is a strategy, it’s a gamble that it won’t backfire.
Friday, 10 July, 2009. Tagged with: budgetnc, crowdsourcing, government, journalism
North Carolina has something of a budget crisis going on. Not as severe as California’s, but one where there are a lot of tax proposals being floated as potential solutions. Here are some of the ones I’ve heard since mid-June:
These items may, or may not be in a budget passed by the legislature. I’m curious about why these particular tax proposals make sense, or do not. I’m motivated by three factors:
- I’m a business owner, and I’m very interested in what might be coming that will affect how I operate my business.
- It speaks to the part of me that got a journalism degree 10 years ago.
- I like making sense of data.
The News & Observer has an ongoing series, The Generous Assembly about how various programs and practices consume a large amount of resources. That’s a start at what I’m looking for.
I’m not approaching this with the assumption that all government spending is good or bad. I do want to know if we are getting our money’s worth. I want to know if there’s a better way to do things. I want to know what the special-interest obstacles are and the motivations behind them. I’m not interested in getting angry at anyone. I’m not interested in political gamesmanship. Talking points do not interest me. I want well-sourced information to make an informed evaluation.
Here’s an incomplete list of questions I’m interested in seeing addressed:
Is the spending we are trying to pay for effective spending?
- Are we paying for things that we shouldn’t be?
- Are there programs – Global TransPark comes to mind – that have not met their stated goals?
- Is there a possibility those programs could be fixed?
- Is there good process to determine if a program is ineffective and shut it down?
Do these tax increases make sense?
- Are these items that are convenient to tax because they’re harder to justify?
- Because some of them are purely discretionary?
- Because they’ll make a meaningful dent?
- Are there alternative tax structures to examine?
Is there an alternate way of resolving the issue?
- Could we spend less money?
- How?
- What programs would be affected? Are we talking about eliminating kindergarten to make that happen? (Yes, hyperbole, but consequences are important considerations)
Is this the best possible solution?
- Are we getting the state’s financial house on better footing or merely staving-off disaster?
- If we’re just staving-off disaster, what do we really need to do to set things right?
How is this going to affect me?
- How much are these tax increases going to cost me?
- Are these increases offset by anything?
Answering
Two late-evening tweets got a couple of responses, with one link to NC State’s Budget Central. The other is to the Sunshine Review of the NC state budget. (Thanks, @mockernut)
I don’t have comments here, but if you find information that would add to everyone’s understanding of the budget and tax situation, write-it-up and tag it with ‘budgetnc’ on your blog or with ‘#budgetnc’ on Twitter. Thanks in advance for helping me understand our state’s situation at least a little bit better.
