DOJ news release: “The Justice Department announced today that U.S. Investigations Services Inc. (USIS) and its parent company, Altegrity, have agreed to settle allegations that USIS violated the False Claims Act (FCA) for conduct involving a contract for background investigations that USIS held with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM). The companies have agreed… Continue Reading
Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002
Monthly Archives: August 2015
Thousands of Americans cannot make bail each year and end up in jail
The Bail Trap, Nick Pinto, New York Times Magazine, August 15, 2015 “Criminal justice,” President Obama said in a speech to the N.A.A.C.P. last month, “is not as fair as it should be. Mass incarceration makes our country worse off, and we need to do something about it.” Two days after the speech, Obama became… Continue Reading
Review Federal Agencies on Yelp
Yelp Official Blog: “We are excited to announce that Yelp has concluded an agreement with the federal government that will allow federal agencies and offices to claim their Yelp pages, read and respond to reviews, and incorporate that feedback into service improvements. We encourage Yelpers to review any of the thousands of agency field offices,… Continue Reading
July 2015 was warmest month ever recorded for the globe
The “warmest ever notices” are arriving with regular frequency – new heat records are recorded so quickly it is difficult to distinguish the impact – but the overall trend is clear – the weather is getting warmer – in the US and around the world (2015 may be the hottest year in recorded history). To… Continue Reading
Manufacturing Job Loss – Trade Not Productivity Is the Culprit
Economic Policy Institute Brief by Robert E. Scott: “The United States lost 5 million manufacturing jobs between January 2000 and December 2014. There is a widespread misperception that rapid productivity growth is the primary cause of continuing manufacturing job losses over the past 15 years. Instead, as this report shows, job losses can be traced… Continue Reading
Corporate Governance and Hedge Fund Activism
Goodwin, Shane C, Corporate Governance and Hedge Fund Activism (August 2015). Available for download at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2646293 “Over the past 25 years, hedge fund activism has emerged as new form of corporate governance mechanism that brings about operational, financial and governance reforms to a corporation. Many prominent business executives and legal scholars are convinced that… Continue Reading
POGO – Former CRS Researcher Calls for Public Access
“Despite bipartisan support from many organizations, Capitol Hill still hesitates to grant public access to taxpayer-funded formal reports from the Congressional Research Service (CRS). The Project On Government Oversight has long reported on the importance of opening these reports to the public. POGO worked with many open-government allies to urge Members of Congress to change the… Continue Reading
Minutes of Federal Open Market Committee July 28-29, 2015
“The Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Open Market Committee on Wednesday released the attached minutes of the Committee meeting held on July 28-29, 2015. The minutes for each regularly scheduled meeting of the Committee ordinarily are made available three weeks after the day of the policy decision and subsequently are published in the Board’s… Continue Reading
How Victims Can Regain Control Mitigate Threats in Wake of OPM Breach
“In June 2015, the Nation learned that the personnel records of 21.5 million United States citizens had been exfiltrated by an unknown adversary from the Office of Personnel Management, one of the largest known breaches in the history of the U.S. Government. The immediate public outcry included congressional hearings attributing the breach to OPM administrators and… Continue Reading
Voice for science in climate change media coverage
“Climate Feedback brings the expertise of the scientific community into the world of online climate coverage to provide readers and authors with in-situ feedback about the content’s scientific credibility. Climate Feedback is a project born from the reality that we are at a critical moment in history, one in which important decisions about climate change… Continue Reading
FAA software glitch heavily impacted east coast air travel
News release: “The FAA identified a recent software upgrade at the Leesburg, VA, high-altitude radar facility as the source of Saturday’s automation problems. The agency is working closely with its contractor, Lockheed Martin Corp., to prevent future occurrences. Despite the outage, air traffic controllers safely handled 70 to 88 percent of Saturday’s scheduled arrivals and… Continue Reading
Harmonisation of the Unique Transaction Identifier – consultative report
“G20 Leaders agreed in 2009 that all over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives contracts should be reported to trade repositories (TRs) as part of their commitment to reform OTC derivatives markets in order to improve transparency, mitigate systemic risk and protect against market abuse. Aggregation of the data reported across TRs is necessary to help ensure that authorities… Continue Reading
