U.S. PIRG – Closing the Billion Dollar Loophole – How States Are Reclaiming Revenue Lost to Offshore Tax Havens: “Every year, corporations use complicated gimmicks to shift U.S. earnings to subsidiaries in offshore tax havens – countries with minimal or no taxes – in order to reduce their state and federal income tax liability by billions of dollars.… Continue Reading
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Author Archives: Sabrina I. Pacifici
The Declassification Engine
Computational Analysis of Official Secrecy – a project by historians, data scientists, legal scholars, and transparency advocates from Columbia University: “The enormous growth in the number of official documents – many of them withheld from scholars and journalists even decades later – has raised serious concerns about whether traditional research methods are adequate for ensuring government accountability. But… Continue Reading
EPIC – Supreme Court Allows Warrantless Search of Home
“In a case that narrows the warrant requirement for searches of homes, the Supreme Court upheld the warrantless search of a suspect’s home by the LAPD after the person objected. In Fernandez v. California, the officers returned to the apartment of the resident after he had been arrested, and obtained consent from a roommate to conduct… Continue Reading
Pew – Indians Want Political Change
“Seven-in-ten Indians are dissatisfied with the way things are going in India today, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. And, with the Indian parliamentary elections just weeks away, the Indian public, by a margin of more than three-to-one, would prefer the Hindu-nationalist opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to lead the next Indian government… Continue Reading
Pew – The Internet and Religion
“At the National Religious Broadcasters Convention, Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project, reported the Project’s latest findings about how Americans use digital technology and their implications for religious institutions: “There is no neutral position when it comes to the Internet. Whether you use it or you don’t, it still affects your organization. If… Continue Reading
New GAO Reports – Managing Defense IT, Military Health System, Retirement Security
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY: Leveraging Best Practices and Reform Initiatives Can Help Defense Manage Major Investments, GAO-14-400T: Published: Feb 26, 2014. Publicly Released: Feb 26, 2014: “The federal government reportedly plans to spend at least $82 billion on IT in fiscal year 2014. Of that, Defense plans to spend over $39 billion—$5.5 billion on classified systems, $9 billion on acquisitions,… Continue Reading
Series – Inside Detroit’s Nascent Start-Up Culture
Tim Alberta writes in a new series in the National Journal: “It started as a school project for Veronika Scott, who at age 20 was studying design downtown at the College for Creative Studies. One of Scott’s professors challenged students to create a design that would meet people’s “needs” instead of just following “trends.” So, Scott, a… Continue Reading
Offshore wind farms could tame hurricanes before they reach land, Stanford-led study says
Bjorn Carey, Stanford News Service: “Computer simulations by Professor Mark Z. Jacobson have shown that offshore wind farms with thousands of wind turbines could have sapped the power of three real-life hurricanes, significantly decreasing their winds and accompanying storm surge, and possibly preventing billions of dollars in damages. For the past 24 years, Mark Z. Jacobson, a… Continue Reading
Crime Against Persons With Disabilities, 2009–2012
News release: “An estimated 1.3 million nonfatal violent crimes occurred against persons with disabilities in 2012, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced today. While the annual number of victimizations increased from 2008 to 2012, the number in 2012 was not statistically different from 2011. These findings are based on BJS’s National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS),… Continue Reading
The World’s Constitutions to Read, Search and Compare
“New constitutions are written every year. The people who write these important documents need to read and analyze texts from other places. Constitute offers access to the world’s constitutions that users can systematically compare them across a broad set of topics — using a modern, clean interface.] HOW TO USE CONSTITUTE? Constitute allows you to interact… Continue Reading
NIH releases comprehensive new data outlining Hispanic/Latino health and habits
“A comprehensive health and lifestyle analysis of people from a range of Hispanic/ Latino origins shows that this segment of the U.S. population is diverse, not only in ancestry, culture, and economic status, but also in the prevalence of several diseases, risk factors, and lifestyle habits. These health data are derived from the Hispanic Community Health… Continue Reading
Introducing eBooks from the Federal Depository Library Program
“To help meet the needs of the Federal Depository Library (FDL) community, the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) has made eBooks available in the Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP). These titles are joining the growing number of online resources that have been a vital part of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) for over… Continue Reading
