Nate Schweber, New York Times: “More than 70 percent of tribal land in the Northern Plains is unplowed, compared with around 60 percent of private land, the World Wildlife Fund said. Around 90 million acres of unplowed grasses remain on the Northern Plains. Tribes on 14 reservations here saved about 10 percent of that 90… Continue Reading
Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002
Monthly Archives: August 2014
2013 Annual Survey of Public Pensions
2013 Annual Survey of Public Pensions: State-Administered Defined Benefit Data: “Provides a comprehensive look at the financial activity of the nation’s state-administered defined benefit pension systems, including cash and investment holdings, receipts, payments, pension obligations and membership information. Statistics are shown at the national level and for individual states. The total cash and investment holdings… Continue Reading
An Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: 2014 to 2024
“The federal budget deficit has fallen sharply during the past few years, and it is on a path to decline further this year and next year. However, later in the coming decade, if current laws governing federal taxes and spending generally remained unchanged, revenues would grow only slightly faster than the economy and spending would… Continue Reading
Open Intellectual Property Casebook
“Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain is announcing the publication of Intellectual Property: Law & the Information Society—Cases and Materials by James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins. This book, the first in a series of Duke Open Coursebooks, is available for free download under a Creative Commons license. It can also be purchased in a glossy paperback print… Continue Reading
Drones at Home: Domestic Drone Legislation – A Survey, Analysis and Framework
Zoldi, Dawn M. K., Drones at Home: Domestic Drone Legislation — A Survey, Analysis and Framework (July 9, 2014). Available at for download SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2486259 “Can the government employ drones domestically without running roughshod over personal privacy? In an effort to preemptively rein in potential government overreach, most states have proposed legislation that restricts or forbids… Continue Reading
Review of Alleged Patient Deaths, Patient Wait Times, Scheduling Practices at Phoenix VA Health Care System
Dept. of Veterans Affairs, OIG – Review of Alleged Patient Deaths, Patient Wait Times, and Scheduling Practices at the Phoenix VA Health Care System, 8/26/2014. “This is the final report addressing allegations of gross mismanagement of VA resources, criminal misconduct by senior leadership, systemic patient safety issues, and possible wrongful deaths at the Phoenix VA Health Care… Continue Reading
Investigative Report – NSA created ‘google-like search’ engine – shared access with other agencies
“Data available through ICREACH appears to be primarily derived from surveillance of foreigners’ communications, and planning documents show that it draws on a variety of different sources of data maintained by the NSA. Though one 2010 internal paper clearly calls it “the ICREACH database,” a U.S. official familiar with the system disputed that, telling The Intercept that while “it… Continue Reading
Social Media and the ‘Spiral of Silence’
“A major insight into human behavior from pre-internet era studies of communication is the tendency of people not to speak up about policy issues in public—or among their family, friends, and work colleagues—when they believe their own point of view is not widely shared. This tendency is called the “spiral of silence.” Some social media creators… Continue Reading
European Facebook Users Privacy Lawsuit Moves Forward
EPIC: “A group of over 25,000 European Facebook users may proceed with their lawsuit against Facebook. The users, led by privacy activist Max Schrems, sued Facebook in a court in Vienna. The users charge Facebook with violating EU privacy law by improperly handling users’ data. Now that the court has approved the class action suit, Facebook must respond to… Continue Reading
Workplace Stress in the United States
OECD Economics Department Working Papers. Workplace Stress in the United States. Issues and Policies. Michael Darden, July 21, 2014. “Despite relative affluence, workplace stress is a prominent feature of the US labour market. To the extent that job stress causes poor health outcomes – either directly through increased blood pressure, fatigue, muscle pain, etc. or indirectly through increased… Continue Reading
Understanding Changes in Poverty
Inchauste, Gabriela; Azevedo, João Pedro; Essama-Nssah, B.; Olivieri, Sergio; Van Nguyen, Trang; Saavedra-Chanduvi, Jaime; Winkler, Hernan. 2014. Understanding Changes in Poverty. World Bank Group, Washington, DC. License: CC BY 3.0 IGO. “Understanding Changes in Poverty brings together different methods to decompose the contributions to poverty reduction. A simple approach quantifies the contribution of changes in demographics,… Continue Reading
An All-of-Government Approach to Increase Resilience for International Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosive Events
“Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and high-yield Explosive (CBRNE) events have the potential to destabilize governments, create conditions that exacerbate violence or promote terrorism. This can trigger global repercussions. These events can quickly overwhelm the infrastructure and capability of the responders, especially in countries that do not have the specialized resources for response like those available… Continue Reading
