| Time |
Event |
| 9:47a |
Urgent: Fair districting in every state
US citizens: call on your state legislature to implement fair
districting. |
| 10:02a |
Urgent: Federal contractors should disclose political spending
US citizens: phone President Biden and urge him to issue an executive
order requiring federal contractors to disclose all of their political
spending.
The White House comments line is +1-202-456-1111.
If you phone, please spread the word! |
| 10:17a |
Urgent: Federal contractors, disclose political spending
US citizens: phone President Biden and urge him to issue an executive
order requiring federal contractors to disclose all of their political
spending.
The White House comments line is +1-202-456-1111.
If you phone, please spread the word! |
| 10:47a |
US, China, must collaborate on global heating
Could the US and China collaborate to curb global heating?
It seems to me that neither government has a strong enough commitment
to that cause. In the US, it is because Republicans are determined to
keep driving straight at the cliff. As for China, it seems to assume
that doing this slowly and arriving decades late is sufficient. The
two countries need to be set individually on the goal before they can
collaborate on it. |
| 12:02p |
|
| 12:02p |
Georgia sheriffs charged with beating
*Three Georgia sheriff's deputies, all white, charged with battery after
beating black inmate.*
The video shows that they prepared to attack him, while he was
standing in a cell, doing nothing significant.
Two versions of the video have been published, one in which it the
attack was intentionally blurred and one which shows what happened.
The thug department promoted the former and the latter is hard to find. |
| 12:17p |
|
| 1:02p |
Corporate monopoly on national park fees
The insufficient competition in the US allows businesses with market
power to gouge by piling on "junk fees". Booz Alan has a monopoly
over some kinds of access to some US national parks and other public
lands, exercised via a "government" web site run by that company, and
pulls in much more income from junk fees than the US government agency
concerned actually gets.
But it's worse than that. Aside from the matter of price, use of that
"government" web site requires running nonfree software. Those parks
are off-limits to the free world.
I have visited some US national parks, and I paid cash to enter them.
Is that still possible? Can anyone investigate that site (see the
article) and report which parks and places can't be entered by paying
cash, without using any web site?
Or which parks and places can still be entered by paying cash,
without any web site?
Whichever list is shorter would be the more useful. |
| 1:17p |
Systemic US corruption
The "big four" accounting firms are structurally embedded in
systematic corruption.
They are "too big to fail", but sooner or later one of them will fail.
The way to end the corruption is clear: prohibit accounting companies
from doing anything other than auditing.
If a sudden change is hard to implement, here's a way to force them to
make them separate gradually.
Tax the consulting gross sales of accounting firms a stated percentage
that rises annually. It could be 3% in the first year, 6% in the
second year, and so on. I think that in 5 years they will have moved
most of the consulting business to some new sister company.
The details could be adjusted so as to require splitting each current
company's non-auditing work into N or more independent new companies.
Other adjustments could make them split the auditing work among
a larger number of new auditing companies. |
| 2:02p |
Nigerian student verses government
A Nigerian student faces criminal charges of "defamation" after
beatings in jail were not enough to make him confess.
The details of what the student said are a side issue — treating
defamation as a crime always endangers freedom of speech. |