The question of reopening schools during the COVID-19 pandemic and until a vaccine or effective treatment exists is one of the most potentially significant questions of our time. The top priority in school reopening plans is the health and safety of students and staff. In order to ensure this occurs, schools should work in collaboration…
Wall Street investors in need of a replacement for the former cash cow of mortgage-backed securities (pre-bailout, that is) only had to look as far as a massive, bargain basement-priced stock of used houses obtained through bankruptcy sales coupled with a corresponding, unparalleled increase in prospective renters (aka former homeowners with few options for housing…
The safety case regulatory regime is touted as a “tripartite system consisting of active and equal participation from the regulator, workforce, and industry.” Indeed, a potentially, more socially beneficial regime would be a quadripartite system that includes the neighbors of the regulated facilities. The neighbors are often aware of problems that workers don’t or won’t…
For a government, its businesses, other organizations, and citizens to flourish, its people, goods, and information must have the ability to move and interact freely in an integrated, cost efficient, resilient, and effective manner. Reliable, responsive infrastructure helps make this possible. Infrastructure includes the physical structure, components, and systems that provide the energy generation, transmission,…
Image via Wikipedia Bell, California “The Government Finance Officers Association [GFOA] established the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting Program (CAFR Program) in 1945 to encourage and assist state and local governments to go beyond the minimum requirements of generally accepted accounting principles to prepare comprehensive annual financial reports that evidence the spirit…
John Aquino points out that, in isolation, the recall information as presented is unfair to Toyota since it ignores overall fatality per vehicle statistics (certainly a fairer proxy for manufacturer safety) and it fails to address the potential conflict of interest inherent in a U.S. agency deriding an import (since it can transfer sales to…
Michel Albert, author of Capitalisme contre Capitalisme, compares the neo-American model of a capitalistic market economy with the Rhenish capitalism of Germany’s social market economy. The neo-American model is based on the ideas of Hayek and Friedman, and the latter, according to Albert, is founded on principles of publicly organized social security. Albert asserts that this model is more equitable, efficient, and less…
Image via Wikipedia Union members who work for the government now outnumber privately employed union members in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Overall union membership is now 15.3 million; 51.5 percent of these members are government workers. As of December 2009, the U.S. non-farming private workforce had 108.4 million workers;…