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Monthly Archives: April 2010

CBO: Evaluating Military Compensation

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Evaluating Military Compensation, April 28, 2010. Testimony before the Subcommittee on Personnel, Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate.

  • “The best barometer of the effectiveness of DoD’s compensation system may be how well the military attracts and retains high-quality personnel. Between 2005 and 2008, the services periodically had trouble recruiting or retaining all of the high-quality personnel they needed. To address those problems, the Congress authorized increases in both cash compensation (such as pay raises and bonuses) and noncash compensation (such as expanded education benefits for veterans and their families). All of the services met their recruiting and retention goals in 2009 and are continuing to do so in 2010. However, the relationship between specific changes in pay rates and benefits and the amount of recruiting and retention is not clear, and changes in recruiting and retention may be too gradual or too ambiguous to guide all decisions about compensation. In particular, a variety of factors—including economic conditions—may have significant effects on DoD’s ability to recruit and retain personnel during a given period. Therefore, it is difficult to determine the appropriate increase in compensation
    solely on the basis of recent patterns of recruiting and retention.”

    • CBO: Tax Arbitrage by Colleges and Universities

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    Tax Arbitrage by Colleges and Universities, April 2010 Because colleges and universities serve a public purpose — advancing higher education and promoting myriad forms of research — they enjoy a variety of tax preferences. In addition to being exempt from paying federal income taxes, institutions of higher learning can accept tax deductible charitable contributions and… Continue Reading

    New GAO Reports: 2010 Census, Defense Infrastructure, Quadrennial Defense Review, End-Stage Renal Disease

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    2010 Census: Cooperation with Enumerators Is Critical to a Successful Headcount, GAO-10-665T, April 30, 2010 Defense Infrastructure: DOD Needs to Determine and Use the Most Economical Building Materials and Methods When Acquiring New Permanent Facilities, GAO-10-436, April 30, 2010 Defense Logistics: Actions Needed to Improve Implementation of the Army Logistics Modernization Program, GAO-10-461, April 30,… Continue Reading

    Harvard Magazine: Gutenberg 2.0 Harvard's libraries deal with disruptive change.

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    Gutenberg 2.0 Harvard’s libraries deal with disruptive change, by Jonathan Shaw, Harvard Magazine, May-June 2010 “Who has the most scientific knowledge of large-scale organization, collection, and access to information? Librarians,” says [Peter Bol, Carswell professor of East Asian languages and civilizations]. A librarian can take a book, put it somewhere, and then guarantee to find… Continue Reading

    EPA Opens Access to Chemical Information Searchable database

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    News release: “The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is making it easier to find chemical information online. EPA is releasing a database, called ToxRefDB, which allows scientists and the interested public to search and download thousands of toxicity testing results on hundreds of chemicals. ToxRefDB captures 30 years and $2 billion of testing results….ToxRefDB provides… Continue Reading

    Report: Current Standard Fails to Accurately Assess Poverty

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    News release: “A new study released today from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) proposes a new framework for measuring poverty and basic economic security in the United States….The report, A Modern Framework for measuring poverty and basic Economic Security, details how the dominant framework for defining poverty has been defined down over… Continue Reading

    New GAO Reports: Auto Industry, Veteran-owned Small Businesses, 8(a) Program, Homeland Defense, SBA

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    Auto Industry: Lessons Learned from Cash for Clunkers Program, GAO-10-486, April 29, 2010 Department of Veterans Affairs: Preliminary Observations on Issues Related to Contracting Opportunities for Veteran-owned Small Businesses, GAO-10-673T, April 29, 2010 8(a) Program: Fourteen Ineligible Firms Received 5 Million in Sole-Source and Set-Aside Contracts, GAO-10-425, March 30, 2010 Homeland Defense: DOD Can Enhance… Continue Reading

    Independent Panel Finds Insufficient Evidence to Support Preventive Measures for Alzheimer's Disease

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    News release: “Many preventive measures for cognitive decline and for preventing Alzheimer’s disease—mental stimulation, exercise, and a variety of dietary supplements—have been studied over the years. However, an independent panel convened this week by the National Institutes of Health determined that the value of these strategies for delaying the onset and/or reducing the severity of… Continue Reading

    The Global development of free access to legal information

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    Greenleaf G., “The Global development of free access to legal information”, in European Journal of Law and Technology, Vol. 1, Issue 1, 2010. “Since the mid1990s the Internet’s Worldwide Web has provided the necessary technical platform to enable free access to computerised legal information. Prior to the web there were many online legal information systems… Continue Reading

    The 2010 Retirement Confidence Survey: Confidence Stabilizing, But Preparations Continue to Erode

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    Confidence Stabilizing, But Preparations Continue to Erode, By Ruth Helman, Mathew Greenwald and Associates, and Craig Copeland and Jack VanDerhei, Employee Benefit Research Institute, March 2010 “The 2010 Retirement Confidence Survey—the 20th annual wave of this survey—finds that the record-low confidence levels measured during the past two years of economic decline appear to have bottomed… Continue Reading