Are we enabling hackers? Every time someone is hacked, not only is the fact known, but what is hacked is made public. Sure the gossipy part of us reads what Colin Powell had to say about Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. But do we actually need to know what he said? Is that truly newsworthy? What cause has been advanced? The ratings of certain news outlets or the voyeuristic part of us? Same thing when Sony was hacked a while back. Careers were lost over it, but was it necessary for us to know what celebrity Continue reading “Hacked E-Mails, Leaks and Transparency”
Category: Governance
Donor Advised Funds
I had not heard of donor-advised funds until I read about them quite recently. They are funds similar to private foundations, where the donor can advise where his or her money is to go. Say you have a few millions, instead of donating them straight to a charity, you can give them to a DAF and instruct them where to disburse the money. Perhaps a family member has had cancer raising your interest in the disease and you would then specify the money is to go to a cancer charity, or as I understand it, a specific organization. These funds have recently come to attention because of an article written in the New York Review of Books stating that they interfere with Continue reading “Donor Advised Funds”
Private Companies Delivering Public Services
The idea of contracting public services to private companies which operate them at a profit needs to be reevaluated. Several articles have been published recently documenting how they operate. Mother Jones had a long article about private prisons, where a reporter worked as a guard for four months in order to research it. The horrors of that prison in Louisiana shocked me not because of their nature, I had read about them before, but because Continue reading “Private Companies Delivering Public Services”
Homeless Prevention
New York City has long had a homeless prevention program, enabling people who are about to be homeless to reach out and receive assistance, perhaps legal advice, cash assistance or housing referrals. It is not perfect, but it exists. The program has even shown that helping people before they become homeless is more effective and costs less. Several cities and states have homelessness prevention programs too. According to Google so does Los Angeles, but that’s not quite so. In one of the largest homeless population in the US, homeless prevention is scant, and an op-ed by Adam Murray, executive director of Inner City Law Center, calls for shifting our focus from helping the homeless to preventing homelessness. Preventing homelessness is Continue reading “Homeless Prevention”