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Daily Archives: September 12, 2016

Newsweek – Between 2003 and 2009, the Bush White House “lost” 22 million emails

Gone but not forgotten, email messages lost, not archived, disappeared – at the highest level of government – written by officials from both parties, and lest we forget, this reminder by Nina Burleigh in Newsweek – “For 18 months, Republican strategists, political pundits, reporters and Americans who follow them have been pursuing Hillary Clinton’s personal email habits, and no evidence of a crime has been found. But now they at least have the skills and interest to focus on a much larger and deeper email conspiracy, one involving war, lies, a private server run by the Republican Party and contempt of Congress citations—all of it still unsolved and unpunished. Clinton’s email habits look positively transparent when compared with the subpoena-dodging, email-hiding, private-server-using George W. Bush administration. Between 2003 and 2009, the Bush White House “lost” 22 million emails. This correspondence included millions of emails written during the darkest period in America’s recent history, when the Bush administration was ginning up support for what turned out to be a disastrous war in Iraq with false claims that the country possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and, later, when it was firing U.S. attorneys for political reasons. Like Clinton, the Bush White House used a private email server—its was owned by the Republican National Committee. And the Bush administration failed to store its emails, as required by law, and then refused to comply with a congressional subpoena seeking some of those emails. “It’s about as amazing a double standard as you can get,” says Eric Boehlert, who works with the pro-Clinton group Media Matters. “If you look at the Bush emails, he was a sitting president, and 95 percent of his chief advisers’ emails were on a private email system set up by the RNC. Imagine if for the last year and a half we had been talking about Hillary Clinton’s emails set up on a private DNC server?”

Yale News – Video games can have lasting impact on learning

YaleNews: “A computer-based brain training program developed at Yale University helps improve student performance in reading and math — in some cases even more than individualized tutoring, according to a new study published Sept. 12 in Scientific Reports. In a study of more than 500 second graders, math and reading scores on school- administered tests… Continue Reading

Blog Series: The Higher Education Market and Student Debt

New York Fed – Liberty Street Economics Blog (first of four blog postings): “The past decade and a half has seen dramatic changes in the higher education landscape, characterized by significant growth in enrollment. This growth has been concentrated mostly in for-profit schools, where enrollment skyrocketed in the first decade of the period, nearly quadrupling… Continue Reading

Study – How Much Do You Pollute? Individuals Can Calculate Their Bay Footprint

Chesapeake Bay Foundation: “If everyone in the Chesapeake Bay drainage area consumed only the recommended amount of protein, the associated reductions in nitrogen pollution would be equivalent to what is needed to save the Chesapeake Bay. That is one of the findings of an exercise by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) and the University of… Continue Reading

Treasury IG – Processes Are Not Sufficient to Assist Victims of Employment-Related Identity Theft

Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration – Processes Are Not Sufficient to Assist Victims of Employment-Related Identity Theft. August 10, 2016. Reference Number: 2016-40-065. “Taxpayers identified as victims of employment-related identity theft are not notified. During the period February 2011 to December 2015, the IRS identified almost 1.1 million taxpayers who were victims of employment-related… Continue Reading

GAO Reports – Bulk Fuel, Generic Drugs, DHS, Affordable Care Act, School Choice

Bulk Fuel: Actions Needed to Improve DOD’s Fuel Consumption Budget Data, GAO-16-644: Published: Sep 12, 2016. Publicly Released: Sep 12, 2016. Generic Drugs Under Medicare: Part D Generic Drug Prices Declined Overall, but Some Had Extraordinary Price Increases, GAO-16-706: Published: Aug 12, 2016. Publicly Released: Sep 12, 2016. Homeland Security: DHS’s Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear… Continue Reading

Oceana report – Deceptive Dishes: Seafood Swaps Found Worldwide

Oceana – “Seafood fraud is a serious global problem that undermines honest businesses and fishermen that play by the rules. It also threatens consumer health and puts our oceans at risk. As global fishing becomes more expansive and further industrialized, seafood fraud and its related impacts could get even worse. This update of Oceana’s 2014 review of seafood fraud studies demonstrates the global scope of the problem,… Continue Reading

MIT paper documents terahertz waves technology to read books without opening them

Full text, open source paper – Terahertz time-gated spectral imaging for content extraction through layered structures, Nature Communications 7, Article number: 12665, doi:10.1038/ncomms12665. Received 29 October 2015. Accepted 20 July 2016. Published 09 September 2016 – “Spatial resolution, spectral contrast and occlusion are three major bottlenecks for non-invasive inspection of complex samples with current imaging… Continue Reading

FT 2016 masters in management rankings

Via the Financial Times, September 11, 2016: “The University of St Gallen’s domination of the Financial Times’ ranking of masters in management courses continues for another year. The Swiss school came top of the list of 90 best masters programmes worldwide in 2016, winning its sixth consecutive crown. France’s HEC Paris and Essec Business School… Continue Reading