politics/$

Politics & Money

flight pattern coordination sounds like a problem for

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The “pre-departure clearance” computer software designed to automate the filing and amending of flight plans and the delivery of departure clearances isn’t capable of flagging or identifying multiple plans that have been filed for the same flight, the letters said. This can result in a controller clearing a flight for departure based on an outdated plan, and the pilots flying a route not anticipated or planned for by the controller.To try to catch the problem, controllers have to go through the time-consuming process of reviewing flights plans, calling pilots and searching through paper strips that are passed among controllers and marked to track a plane’s progress from taxing to takeoff. Then they compare the information on the paper strips to data displayed on computers.

Source: Whistleblowers Expose Problem That Could Cause Plane Collisions

Sounds like this is an application needed for this “Silicon Valley* for Government” startup that Obama has built 140 deep and wants to grow to 500. I hope they have a whistle blower’s queue: here’s what’s wrong or repetitive busy work in my agency, please fix it.

*note: silicon valley growth was pushed along by government investment.

“fear of new immigrants”

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TPM’s KELLI MARSHALL lays out the brief history of the pledge of allegiance:

In his book To the Flag: The Unlikely History of the Pledge of Allegiance, Richard J. Ellis digs further into the nation’s “patriotic” school program of 1892. Ellis writes that the creation of the Pledge actually reflected “two widespread anxieties among native-born Americans” at the time: the fear of new immigrants (especially in the Northeast), and the complacency of post-Civil War Americans oblivious to the dangers facing the country.

Source: The Strange History Behind The Pledge Of Allegiance

Democratic Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders’ correct and overly apologetic summary of the founding of our nation puts this in better perspective.

 

lead and structured settlements

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Over the past two decades, state legislatures and the U.S. Congress have passed measures to protect vulnerable people selling structured settlements. In 2000, Maryland inked the Structured Settlement Protection Act, which enumerated a series of requirements. First, a seller must seek the counsel of an independent professional adviser. Then the proposed deal must go before a county judge, who decides whether that agreement reflects the seller’s best interests. But today, critics say, that measure is failing

Source: How companies make millions off lead-poisoned, poor blacks – The Washington Post

Washington’s Teeth were wooden if wooden means pulled from a Slave’s mouth

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And what history is still taught today:

In 1780 a French dentist named Jean Pierre Le Moyer (also called Le Mayeaur, Le Mayeur, and Joseph Lemaire) came to America, possibly as a naval surgeon with the French forces commanded by the Comte de Rochambeau, and over the next decade treated patients in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Alexandria, and Richmond. […] Le Moyer first treated George Washington’s teeth at his military headquarters in 1783.

The following year, in May of 1784, Washington paid several unnamed “Negroes,” presumably Mount Vernon slaves, 122 shillings for nine teeth, slightly less than one-third the going rate advertised in the papers, “on acct. of the French Dentis [sic} Doctr. Lemay [sic],” almost certainly Le Moyer. Over the next four years, the dentist was a frequent and apparently favorite guest on the plantation. Whether the Mount Vernon slaves sold their teeth to the dentist for any patient who needed them or specifically for George Washington is unknown, although Washington’s payment suggests that they were for his own use. Washington probably underwent the transplant procedure–“I confess I have been staggered in my belief in the efficacy of transplantion,” he told Richard Varick, his friend and wartime clerk, in 1784–and thus it may well be that some of the human teeth implanted to improve his appearance, or used to manufacture his dentures, came from his own slaves.

via Special Video Reports – The Private Lives Of George Washington’s Slaves | Jefferson’s Blood | FRONTLINE | PBS

props to FranChescaleigh’s blog

Drug testing welfare applicants is bad policy

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Drug testing welfare applicants a big zero:

Drug testing welfare recipients is demonizing. Courts have ruled on numerous occasions that Republican efforts to make every applicant pee in a cup are unconstitutional. The laws that do go into effect only confirm what researchers already know: Welfare recipients are not rampant drug users, and most of those who do take drugs are not addicts.Those who do have substance abuse problems mostly drink alcohol.

Greece’s new response to austerity demands…

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Greece’s new response to austerity demands…

Syriza, in particular, has been outspoken about the need for Germany to atone for its past in Greece, or at least show a bit more leniency now as compensation. Tsipras has campaigned on the issue for more than a year, including in the build-up to Sunday’s election. “We are going to demand debt reduction, and the money Germany owes us from World War II, including reparations,” he said earlier this month.

A 2013 study carried out by the previous Greek government of defeated Prime Minister Antonis Samaras estimated that Germany owed Greece some $200 billion for damages incurred during the Nazi occupation, the cost of rebuilding destroyed infrastructure as well as loans Nazi authorities forced Greece to pay between 1942 and 1944.

via Greece’s new prime minister wants Germany to pay for Nazi war crimes – The Washington Post.