With ProQuest Privatization of the Statistical Abstract, Individual People Can’t Even Buy What was Free

November 1st, 2012 | Posted by Jim Cook in Democrats | Economy | Election 2012 | Politics | Religion | Tech - (1 Comments)

As you may be aware, one year and one month ago the U.S. government halted publication of the Statistical Abstract of the United States. This publication — which was available free of charge on the Internet via the U.S. Census Bureau — brought together thousands and thousands of pieces of information from across the federal government, putting hundreds and hundreds of standardized tables on a dizzying array of subjects into one place so that any American could keep track of what was going on in their country.

In 2011, the Democratic Obama administration and the Republican-controlled House worked together to end free publication of the Statistical Abstract. Since October 1 2011, new data describing statistical trends in the United States are no longer being brought together in one place for people to freely and easily find.

In its place, at the end of November 2012, a new Statistical Abstract of the United States will be provided by the for-profit business ProQuest. If you want to peruse your own government’s statistics, you’ll have to pay over $150 for a hardcover book, far more than the government charged for its print version.

And what if you want to search the new Statistical Abstract of the United States online? If you’re just a person, unaffiliated with any corporation or other institution, then you can’t. That’s right, you just plain can’t. I called up ProQuest today and spoke with two operators, trying to get a price quote for online access to the new ProQuest Statistical Abstract. ProQuest representatives told me that individual people won’t be allowed to purchase access. Only corporations and other institutions paying many thousands of dollars will gain access.

If you are affiliated with a big institution that has lots of money, then gaining access to government information will be no problem for you. Otherwise, if you’re a person who doesn’t belong to an institution with a lot of money, you’re going to be in the dark.

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Irregular Times Domestic Donation: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

July 16th, 2012 | Posted by Jim Cook in Economy | Media | Politics | Shirts - (0 Comments)

Every time someone takes home one of our liberal sweat-free made in the USA shirts, we set aside a dollar to donate to a good political cause within the United States. This month, our donation goes to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Conservative columnists and politicians are spending a lot of time lately pushing for the cutting of wages and benefits for low-income workers, then complaining in the next breath that low-paid workers who can’t afford medical treatment on their own are “part of a culture of dependency.” People who have taken the time to study the issue have demonstrated that dependency isn’t reduced by reducing the workforce to poverty. They know that dependency is reduced when people who work hard at a full-time job earn enough to meet their needs. They know that dependency is reduced when all children are able to eat well and grow up healthy and learn at reasonably-funded schools.

The “people who have taken the time to study the issue” are the researchers at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and their work should be supported. Read the reports that the Center publishes. If you appreciate what you read, and if you can afford it in these tough times, consider making your own donation.

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Government Collecting Too Much Information About You? Party Followers Change Answer based on who is President

June 11th, 2012 | Posted by Jim Cook in Barack Obama | Democrats | George W. Bush | Homeland Insecurity | Politics | Republicans - (2 Comments)

From the Pew Research Center’s American Values Survey:

I am concerned that the Government is Collecting too Much Information about People Like Me, Pew Survey Answer, 2007 and 2012

When a Republican is in the White House, Democrats are more concerned than Republicans about the prying eyes of big government.

When a Democrat is in the White House, Republicans are more concerned than Democrats about the prying eyes of big government.

My authority figure is a good authority figure. Your authority figure is a dangerous authoritarian.

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Open Letter to Americans Elect CTO Joshua Levine Formally Requesting IRS Documents (Yet Again)

November 10th, 2011 | Posted by Jim Cook in Alternative Parties | Americans Elect | Election 2012 | Ethics | Politics - (7 Comments)

[Note: the following open letter has been sent this morning to Americans Elect Chief Technology Officer Joshua Levine in e-mail form, one of the avenues by which the IRS explicitly recognizes official requests for information may take place.]

Dear Mr. Levine,

The following is an open letter which is directed to you and also published on the web for purposes of full transparency and civic engagement.

In 2010, I made a request by phone for Americans Elect’s IRS documents under which it had re-organized as a Section 501c4 corporation. I have not received any response to this request.

On March 11 2011, I was turned away from the door of the Americans Elect offices by a security guard (see http://irregulartimes.com/index.php/archives/2011/03/25/contrary-to-peter-ackerman-americans-elect-will-not-communicate/) after I arrived to make a personal request for Form 990 (report on the activities of a 501c4 corporation) and Form 1024 (request for status as a 501c4 corporation). Corporations organizing under section 501c4 status are required by the federal government to respond to in-person requests by supplying these forms on the same day they are made.

Immediately following my attempt to make a personal request, I stood outside the Americans Elect office building on 1775 Pennsylvania Avenue, one block away from the White House in Washington DC, and sent an e-mail message to Americans Elect chief Peter Ackerman, Americans Elect executive Kahlil Byrd, Americans Elect Communications Manager (now Campus Director) Nick Troiano, Americans Elect office manager Nancy Blackmore and the general informational e-mail account for Americans Elect. That e-mail message, a copy of which you can read at http://irregulartimes.com/index.php/text-of-e-mail-request-to-americans-elect-for-irs-document-disclosure/, specifically and formally requests copies of Form 990 and IRS forms requesting exemption under section 501c4 (Form 1024). Corporations organizing under section 510c4 status are required to supply these forms within 30 days of a written request. According to IRS information listed below, e-mails count as a valid form of written request.

As of November 10, 2011, eight months after the request and seven months after the deadline for satisfying this request, I have not received any response to this request.

On August 13 2011, I wrote specifically to you as follows:

“As I’m sure you know, I have a number of questions, as they’re listed under my name on the Get Satisfaction system. I won’t waste your time by repeating them here, save one because I’ve been asking it of Americans Elect for some time by multiple methods including certified letter and it’s a pretty basic question, an answer to which appears to be compulsory. My question lies between these ellipses:

…

The federal government requires corporations organized under section 501(c) of the IRS code to make the following forms available the same day upon an in-person request, and within 30 days upon a written request:

* Form 990, the organization’s annual report to the IRS
* Form 1023/1024, the organization’s application for tax-exempt status
* Any letter or other documentation accompanying the organization’s application for tax-exempt status

Americans Elect may not yet have a Form 990 to share with those who make a request, but it has been acting as a 501(c)4 corporation for more than ten months now and therefore should have made an application for tax-exempt status. Americans Elect was organized before that as a political organization under Section 527, creating another set of documents that it is also required to produce upon request. On March 11 2011 I visited Americans Elect headquarters at 1775 Pennsylvania Avenue in an attempt to deliver an in-person request for these forms. A security guard indicated that she had been made aware of my planned visit and refused me any access past the lobby. Unable to deliver my request in person, I made an e-mail request for documents the same day. I have not received any communication from Americans Elect in return. The 30 day federal deadline since my request has passed. On the Get Satisfaction web system, I have posed the question again.

Factual sources:
http://www.irs.gov/charities/article/0,,id=135012,00.html and
http://www.irs.gov/charities/article/0,,id=135005,00.html

Question: What is the reason for Americans Elect’s noncompliance in supplying the requested documents and on what time frame will they be supplied?
…

My official requests by multiple means for this information date back to last year. I am as I’ve stated before willing to pay the costs of reproduction and postage. I look forward to seeing these documents; it might be a good idea to have them posted (with updates when relevant) on the new disclosure page of your website.

Sincerely,

Jim Cook
Irregular Times”

As of November 10, 2011, three months after making the repeated request and two months after the deadline for Americans Elect to satisfy the request, you have not responded with any of the requested information. Neither has Americans Elect posted its Form 990 or Form 1024 for public review.

I am writing again to specifically request these forms, Form 990 and Form 1024. If Americans Elect has chosen for some reason to use any other alternatively publicly-requestable form to register itself as a 501c4 corporation or any other entity, I also formally request that those forms be supplied to me by Americans Elect. I will be happy to receive these forms in electronic form or paper form. If you prefer to send these forms in paper form, I will of course promptly pay all costs associated with these forms’ reproduction and postage. The IRS requires that you supply these forms to me within 30 days.

My contact information for receiving this information is:

Jim Cook
52 Conway Road
Camden, ME 04843
207-230-0018
retorts@irregulartimes.com

I look forward to receiving these documents at your earliest convenience.

Sincerely,

Jim Cook
Irregular Times

http://irregulartimes.com

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World Governments Request User Data from Google. Which Ones and How Much?

October 4th, 2011 | Posted by Jim Cook in Homeland Insecurity | Liberty | Media | Outside the USA - (1 Comments)

Requests to Google for World Governments for Surrender of User Data, July-December 2010

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No Labels Asks Voters To Choose With No Information

September 7th, 2011 | Posted by jclifford in Politics - (5 Comments)

During last night’s PR event by No Labels, the organization declared to viewers, “Today, we need to elect leaders that won’t be bound by pledges, but instead will use their best judgment to go to Washington, analyze the facts, and work together as opposed to being bound to pledges.”

This “no pledges” concept was clearly discussed as a talking point ahead of time, because it was brought up over and over again throughout the hour and half-long event. One would think, listening to the event, that the American people have been demanding that politicians stop making pledges of political action to them, that above all else, American voters don’t want candidates for public office to promise to do anything.

robert kaplanIt’s poppycock.

How are voters supposed to make an intelligent choice about who to elect to represent them in Washington D.C., if the candidates for President and seats Congress won’t tell the American people where they stand on the issues and what they’ll do if elected? Pledges help citizens compare their own values and ideas with those of the candidates. Pledges of particular policy action enable Americans to go beyond the glib imagery of television advertisements. Pledges also help voters track the activities of politicians after Election Day, to see if their rhetoric matches the reality of their use of political power.

Take away campaign pledges, and what factors can voters use to judge the worthiness of candidates for public office? Their hair? The attractiveness of their speaking voices?

This demand from No Labels that politicians no longer make pledges to voters is a contorted response to real problem: The problem that politicians don’t keep their promises. It’s not at all positive for politicians to break the promises they make during their campaigns, but it’s cynical to suggest that politicians simply not to promise anything any more. What Americans want is the opposite: For clear, reasonable, achievable promises to be made, and then kept.

Implicit within the No Labels demand for an end to pledges is a message from No Labels to the American people: Stop paying attention to particular policy issues, butt out of public life, and let Washington D.C. operate without true accountability to voters. In this arrangement, the corporate elites who make up the leadership of No Labels would continue to influence politicians through their use of unlimited campaign funding (independent expenditures) and lobbyists exchanging cash for access. The American people would lose their role, however, and American democracy would be transformed into American oligarchy.

So, this “no pledges” agenda from No Labels turns out to be against the interests of the majority of American voters, whether Republican, Democrat or independent. But, what’s especially cynical is that No Labels doesn’t even follow its own assertion that political leaders shouldn’t make pledges.

The fact is that, in materials publicizing last night’s No Labels event, No Labels itself proudly declared that its spokesman, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, “asked other business leaders to urge Congress and President Obama to end the partisan gridlock paralyzing Washington. More than 100 executives joined him in signing a two-part pledge…” Also, back in March, four months before No Labels co-founder Dave Walker decided that “Real leaders don’t sign pledges”, Walker issued a demand from No Labels that Barack Obama keep his pledge to put “everything on the table” in budget negotiations – even draconian cuts to Social Security, Medicare, education, and programs to feed hungry children and pregnant women.

Throughout its operations, No Labels shows this attitude: One standard for American voters, and another standard for corporate leaders. No Labels asserts that corporate leaders have the right to expect politicians to make and keep pledges to them. No Labels wants to leave American voters, on the other hand, without any assurances at all.

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Information Explosion: Expired, Resurrected

May 11th, 2011 | Posted by Jim Cook in Irregular Ideas | Media - (3 Comments)

Prof. Latanya Sweeney of Carnegie Mellon University has written a chapter for the book Confidentiality, Disclosure, and Data Access entitled “Information Explosion”, in which she characterizes the amount of information made available on people and the increase in the amount of such available information:

In this chapter, I examine the tremendous growth in information being collected on individuals. From the examples provided in this chapter, it is clear that many details in the lives of most people are being documented in databases somewhere. I provide examples that exemplify recent behavioral tendencies in the collection of person-specific data. These tendencies are: (1) given an existing person-specific data collection, expand the number of fields being collected; I term this the “collect more” trend; (2) replace an existing aggregate data collection with a person-specific one; I term this the “collect specifically” trend; and, (3) given a question or problem to solve or merely provided the opportunity, gather information by starting a new person-specific data collection related to the question, problem or opportunity; I term this the “collect it if you can” trend. No matter how you look at it, all three tendencies result in more and more information being collected on individuals. Having so much sensitive information available makes it even more difficult for other organizations to release information that are effectively anonymous.

Keywords: data collection practices, privacy

Citation:

L. Sweeney. Information Explosion. Confidentiality, Disclosure, and Data Access:
Theory and Practical Applications for Statistical Agencies,
L. Zayatz, P. Doyle, J. Theeuwes and J. Lane (eds), Urban Institute, Washington, DC, 2001.
Paper: 26 pages in PS or PDF.

This morning, I found that the links were broken on Sweeney’s page.

P.S. Was this information on the information explosion truly expired? It seems not, for three reasons. First, you could always buy the book: horribly old-fashioned and slow, but there you are. Second, information propogates; the same chapter is available here at the Data Privacy Lab. Third, sometimes broken links are repaired. A malfunctioning server sprang back to life, and the chapter is available again.

Read Sweeney’s chapter if you need more water from the metaphorical firehose: the section on supermarket cards alone will give you the heebie jeebies.

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Perish. Publish? Emergency Medicine Article Suggests E-Code for Segways

April 20th, 2011 | Posted by Jim Cook in Science - (0 Comments)

Science is so much fun. In the world of academic medicine, where doctors must publish or perish, there are some really colorful articles that stand out from their drab cousins. Take Serious Injuries related to the Segway Personal Transporter: A Case Series by doctors Keith Boniface, Mary Pat McKay, Raymond Lucas, Alison Shaffer and Neal Sikka. This article, which appears in the latest Annals of Emergency Medicine (57:4), reviews approximately 200,000 visits to the George Washington University Hospital Emergency Department over three years and seven months and finds 10 instances in which people were admitted to the hospital due to accidents on a Segway. Based on these ten hospital admissions in a visit population of two hundred thousand people (0.005% of cases), the GWU team recommends a specific national E-Code identifying injuries caused by Segways.

Go ahead, scoff. No, really. Scoff and get it over with, because this E-Code business is really serious stuff — so serious that a 13 page CDC report on E-Codes required an appendix just to name and spell out the 68 acronyms of groups and practices associated with E-Coding. E-Codes are the way for doctors to systematically record the mode of injury sustained by an person who comes into an emergency department. Have you read about the push for evidence-based medicine? The only way for evidence to play a role in shaping medicine’s practice is for evidence on injuries and outcomes to be collected. That’s where E-Codes come in for medicine. On the policy end of matters, the Consumer Product Safety Commission is tasked with making evidence-based declarations about the safety of all sorts of gadgets and gizmos out there, and that includes the Segway. How, Boniface et al argue, can the CPSC or other interested parties investigate the hazards created by Segways if Segway injuries aren’t given their own E-Code? The authors name the hazards they encountered in their laborious non-E-coded search of the data:

One case involved a pedestrian who had tripped over a parked Segway, and one case involved a pedestrian who had been run into by a Segway… several cases involved the rider unintentionally striking an immobile object, including a park bench, a signpost, a light pole, and a tree.

Is there actually a chance that the Segway could obtain its own E-Code for reporting injuries? Well, there’s already an E-Code for intentional self-harm with a paintball gun, suggesting that the answer could be “yes.”

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