Environment

Doing Good While Doing Well: Will Companies and Organizations Step Up to the Challenge in the New Green Economy?

Wednesday 02 February 2011 |

In 2006, when I first published my book "The Green Bubble," I was convinced that the global economy was headed toward a massive financial bubble fueled by a rush to invest in renewable energy sources. Today, in the aftermath of the financial crisis triggered by disastrous failures in the mortgage and credit markets, I am all the more certain. Unfortunately, some executives continue to believe that market bubbles are economic aberrations that can't really be predicted or managed until after they've occurred. I disagree. »

 

Labor

Can We Please Stop Blaming Immigrants?

Tuesday 08 February 2011 | Hostility in the United States toward immigrants has risen sharply in recent years. The strongest sign of this was the law signed last April by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, which gave the police broad powers to detain anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant. Two U.S. Senators, Jon Kyl of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have gone so far as to propose repealing the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which grants automatic citizen- ship to all babies born on U.S. soil, regardless of the citizenship status of the baby’s parents. Of course, these actions are primarily a response to the economic wreckage caused by the 2008-2009 Wall Street collapse. But they fly in the face of evidence, which shows that immigrants are by no means responsible for mass unemployment or the cutbacks in social benefits that U.S. residents are now experiencing. »

 

Women's Issues

House Democrats Fight GOP's "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act"

Tuesday 08 February 2011 | House Judiciary Democrats held a meeting Tuesday to fight the Republican-backed "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act," a bill that seeks to ban federal coverage of abortion in certain cases of rape or incest. »

 

Health

Bush-Appointed Federal Judge Tosses Out Challenge to Health Reform

Friday 04 February 2011 | Judge Roger Vinson’s error-filled opinion was one of the biggest news stories this week, at times even overshadowing the revolution underway in Egypt. Yet another opinion signed by George W. Bush-appointed Judge Keith Starrett highlights just how much of an extreme outlier Vinson is — and how wrong it was for so many observers to overreact to Vinson’s tea partying opinion. »

 

Education

Our Market Regime and Public Education

Monday 07 February 2011 | If we accept the assumption that we think inside a personally determined box which is itself inside a "Let Markets Rule" larger box, we need to acknowledge that such a state of affairs has much affected conditions "here on the ground." I mean that what we think comprises a "good education" has already been affected by market values. An example: we think of "problem solving" and not "critical thinking." A corporation has a "human resources logistics problem," or a computer engineer has a programming problem or an institution has a "cash flow" problem. And so on. The point is that in order to satisfy goals and objectives, certain problems that arise have to be overcome. Organizations come into being by solving problems. The problem solver is a corporate asset. »

 

Voter Rights

Pac-Man Hacked Onto a Touch-Screen Voting Machine Without Breaking "Tamper-Evident" Seals

Saturday 21 August 2010 | This is your Sequoia touch-screen voting machine.... This is your Sequoia touch-screen voting machine with Pac-Man hacked onto it without disturbing any of the "tamper-evident" seals supposedly meant to protect it from hackers... Any questions?... Sequoia's voting machines, used in some 20% of U.S. elections, employ Intellectual Property (IP) still owned by a Venezuelan firm tied to Hugo Chavez. Sequoia itself is now owned by a Canadian firm called Dominion. (Though Dominion, like Sequoia itself before them, lied about the continuing Venezuelan/Chavez ties in their recent announcement of the acquisition, as detailed exclusively by The BRAD BLOG, to little notice, in June.) The Pac-Man hack onto the Sequoia/Dominion voting machine was revealed this week. It was accomplished without breaking any of the "tamper-evident" seals that voting machine companies and election officials claim are used to ensure nobody can physically hack into them without being discovered. "We received the machine with the original tamper-evident seals intact," the hackers from Princeton and University of Michigan report. "The software can be replaced without breaking any of these seals, simply by removing screws and opening the case." »