In Plain Sight: Is Open Data Improving Our Health?
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Oil and Gas Industry Investments in the National Rifle Association and Safari Club International Reshaping American Energy, Land, and Wildlife Policy
JOE RIIS JOE Oil and Gas Industry Investments in the National Rifle Association and Safari Club International Reshaping American Energy, Land, and Wildlife Policy By Matt Lee-Ashley April 2014 WWW.AMERICANPROGRESS.ORG Oil and Gas Industry Investments in the National Rifle Association and Safari Club International Reshaping American Energy, Land, and Wildlife Policy By Matt Lee-Ashley April 2014 Contents 1 Introduction and summary 3 Oil and gas industry investments in three major sportsmen groups 5 Safari Club International 9 The National Rifle Association 11 Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation 13 Impact of influence: How the oil and gas industry’s investments are paying off 14 Threats to endangered and threatened wildlife in oil- and gas-producing regions 19 Threats to the backcountry 22 Threats to public access and ownership 25 Conclusion 27 About the author and acknowledgments 28 Endnotes Introduction and summary Two bedrock principles have guided the work and advocacy of American sports- men for more than a century. First, under the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, wildlife in the United States is considered a public good to be conserved for everyone and accessible to everyone, not a commodity that can be bought and owned by the highest bidder.1 Second, since President Theodore Roosevelt’s creation of the first wildlife refuges and national forests, sportsmen have fought to protect wildlife habitat from development and fragmentation to ensure healthy game supplies. These two principles, however, are coming under growing fire from an aggressive and coordinated campaign funded by the oil and gas industry. As part of a major effort since 2008 to bolster its lobbying and political power, the oil and gas industry has steadily expanded its contributions and influ- ence over several major conservative sportsmen’s organizations, including Safari Club International, or SCI, the National Rifle Association, or NRA, and the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation. -
Licensing Open Government Data Jyh-An Lee
Hastings Business Law Journal Volume 13 Article 2 Number 2 Winter 2017 Winter 2017 Licensing Open Government Data Jyh-An Lee Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/ hastings_business_law_journal Part of the Business Organizations Law Commons Recommended Citation Jyh-An Lee, Licensing Open Government Data, 13 Hastings Bus. L.J. 207 (2017). Available at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hastings_business_law_journal/vol13/iss2/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Hastings Business Law Journal by an authorized editor of UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 2 - LEE MACROED.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 5/5/2017 11:09 AM Licensing Open Government Data Jyh-An Lee* Governments around the world create and collect an enormous amount of data that covers important environmental, educational, geographical, meteorological, scientific, demographic, transport, tourism, health insurance, crime, occupational safety, product safety, and many other types of information.1 This data is generated as part of a government’s daily functions.2 Given government data’s exceptional social and economic value, former U.S. President Barack Obama described it as a “national asset.”3 For various policy reasons, open government data (“OGD”) has become a popular governmental practice and international * Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law in the Chinese University -
HARD, SOFT and DARK MONEY Introduction Early Political Scandals
HARD, SOFT AND DARK MONEY Introduction Early political scandals involved money used for bribery or buying votes. Modern day scandals involve the appearances of corruption depending where gifts and campaign money came from. The U.S. Supreme Court has made a number of controversial decisions expanding the amounts of money in politics by characterizing political donations and expenditures to be exercises of freedom of speech. Among other results, those decisions have created a large and growing category of election related donations and contributions called “dark money.” Important Terms Defined Terms relating to money in politics that are used in this paper have definitions more exactly set out by law. These terms are fully addressed in the MIP paper Definitions for Money in Politics, Disclosure Requirements for PACs The relationships of PACs to their disclosure requirements are shown in the chart below. May Funding Disclosure Donations coordinate Corporations Sources required limited with can donate candidate Political parties PAC’s Super Pac’s 527’s 501(c)’s Dark Money Twenty-nine types of corporations are listed in §501(c) of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) as qualified for nonprofit status. Social Welfare Organizations under §501(c) (4), Labor Unions under §501(c)(5), and Trade Associations under §501(c)(6) of the Internal Revenue Code are not required to report from whom they get their donations. Hence these donations are referred to as dark money. Since social welfare or business interests often intersect with political issues, these groups are allowed to use funds to influence elections, but there is otherwise no dollar limit on how much that can be, and they only need to report the majority of their expenditures in general terms. -
Before the FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION Washington, DC 20554
Before the FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION Washington, DC 20554 Complaint of ) ) Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause, and ) Sunlight Foundation ) ) Against ) ) Hearst Properties, Inc., licensee of WISN-TV, ) Milwaukee, Wisconsin ) ) For Violations of the Communications Act ) §317 and FCC Rule 47 CFR §73.1212 ) To: Media Bureau COMPLAINT The Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause, and Sunlight Foundation1 file this complaint regarding violations of the Communications Act and the Federal Communications Commission’s (“FCC”) regulations by Hearst Properties, Inc., licensee of WISN-TV. WISN-TV is an ABC broadcast television station in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In November 2015, WISN-TV aired political advertisements identified as paid for by Independence USA PAC (“Independence”). Despite the fact that even a cursory search of the public record would have shown that Michael Bloomberg is the sole funder of Independence USA PAC, WISN-TV did not identify Michael Bloomberg as the sponsor of the advertisements or, evidently, make inquiry of Independence USA of its sources of funding, and instead identified the sponsor of the ads as “Independence USA PAC.” On November 19, 2015, while the advertisements were still running on WISN-TV, Complainants provided evidence directly to WISN-TV establishing that Independence USA PAC 1 Descriptions of these organizations can be found in Exhibit A. was not the ad’s true sponsor.2 Specifically, Complainants provided evidence that Michael Bloomberg has provided 100 per cent of Independence’s funding since its creation. -
GEORGETOWN LAW INSTITUTE for PUBLIC REPRESENTATION Directors 600 New Jersey Avenue, NW, Suite 312 Hope M
GEORGETOWN LAW INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC REPRESENTATION Directors 600 New Jersey Avenue, NW, Suite 312 Hope M. Babcock Washington, DC 20001-2075 Angela J. Campbell Telephone: 202-662-9535 Michael T. Kirkpatrick Fax: 202-662-9634 Benton Senior Counselor Andrew Jay Schwartzman Staff Attorneys Meghan M. Boone Justin Gundlach Daniel H. Lutz* Aaron Mackey July 6, 2015 Cathy Williams Federal Communications Commission 445 12th Street, SW Washington, DC 20554 via email to [email protected] and [email protected] RE:` Information Collection regarding Local Public Inspection Files and Political Files OMB Control Number 3060-0215 Dear Ms. Williams, The Campaign Legal Center, Sunlight Foundation, and Common Cause (“CLC et al.”) are writing to strongly support the continued collection of information under FCC Rules 47 CFR §§ 73.3526 and 73.3527 (local public inspection files) and §76.1701 and §73 1943 (political files). They also offer some suggestions to enhance the quality, utility, and clarity of the information collected. The information in the public inspection file is necessary for the Commission to carry out its public interest responsibilities The Notice correctly states that the public and FCC use public file information to evaluate licensee performance, ensure that broadcast stations address issues of concern to their communities of license, and ensure that stations comply with Commission policies concerning licensee control. 80 Fed. Reg. 26048 (May 6, 2015). To serve these functions, it is essential that the public have access to the information in the public files. Requiring television stations to make their public inspection files available online has greatly improved public access. -
Open Data for Smart City and Urban Development
Open Data for Smart City and Urban Development Cases of Open Data Production and Use in the Global South Open Data for Smart City and Urban Development Cases of Open Data Production and Use in the Global South Contents Introduction . 4 Smart Cities, Civic Technology, and Urban Development . 5 Methods . 6 Cases . 7 Africa . 7 Asia . 12 South America . 15 Observations and Discussion . 18 OpenStreetMap and volunteerism . 18 OPEN DATA FOR SMART CITY AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT Infomediary roles and international connections . 19 Cities as hubs for open data . 21 Networking recommendations . 22 Appendix I . 23 Method . 23 Survey . 24 Appendix II . 26 Appendix III | References . 27 3 by All Bong OPEN DATA FOR SMART CITY AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT Introduction Increasing use of open data worldwide facilitates a variety of activities that include government transparency, citizen-government engagement and en- hanced delivery of public services . Open data has proven useful even in the global South where progress can often be inhibited by socioeconomic factors . In such places, open data enables governments, international non-govern- mental organizations (NGOs), and local public and private leaders to innovate and create. This suggests that the global South offers a plethora of experiences for all open data practitioners to draw upon . Events such as the International Open Data Conference (IODC) and organisations such as the Open Data for De- velopment network (OD4D) provide a home for open data practitioners from the global South . Such forums provide opportunities for networking among peers (rather than across a North-South divide) and showcasing of the work being done (as well as continuing needs) in countries such as South Africa, Ne- pal, and Sierra Leone . -
Open Source Hardware (OSHW) for Open Science in the Global South: Geek Diplomacy?
7 Open source hardware (OSHW) for open science in the global south: geek diplomacy? Denisa Kera INTRODUCTION The Do-It-Youself biology (DIYbio) movement originated in the U.S. in approximately 2009 around student iGEM synthetic biology competitions (durrett; field 2011; kuznetsov et al. 2012) as well as parallel open biology efforts in Europe and Asia with their connections to bioart and critical science practices in the late 1990s (bureaud; malina; whiteley, 2014). This movement merged in recent years with other movements coming from professional scientists advocating eScience, Open Science, Open Access and Open Data (neylon; wu, 2009; molloy, 2011; uhlir; schröder, 2007). The calls for changing the publishing model and opening the datasets while supporting online collaboration and crowdsourcing are starting to merge with attempts to reduce the cost of experimental research and increase reproducibility by building low cost customizable laboratory equipment (pearce, 2014; landrain et al. 2013). This convergence of hackerspace and makerspace OSHW interests with open science goals (open data, open access, online collaboration) created some unique opportunities to involve 134 Denisa Kera citizen scientists, but also scientists from the developing countries in alternative global research networks (kera, 2012A; kera, 2013). In this paper we want to reflect upon the critical role of open hardware in forming these unique South to South and South to North networks and research cooperation. We will analyse the issue as a form of “geek diplomacy” over open science. Geek diplomacy is a citizen, grassroots involvement in science which bridges various knowledge and infrastructural divides to create a more inclusive R&D response to challenging international political, social and scientific issues. -
Delegate Research Information
MSC 65th Student Conference on National Affairs Texas A&M University Delegate Research Information Round Table Modern Monopolies: The Influence of Mega-Corporations Facilitator: Casey Fleming ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This delegate research information is not intended to be a comprehensive assessment of your assigned round table topic, but rather a starting point to help launch your own personal investigations into the various associated issues. It is encouraged, if not expected, that your policy proposals will be inclusive of aspects pertaining to your round table topic that are not covered in this research compilation. You, your facilitator, your round table host, and your fellow roundtable delegates are all responsible for crafting a policy proposal that takes this into consideration. Terms & Actors Terms Bureaucracy - agencies made by the federal government to help enforce laws made. Most direct source of corruption from corporations. Citizens United vs. Federal Election Committee- landmark Case settled in 2010 by the Supreme Court that overturned certain long-standing restrictions on political fundraising and spending. Federal Campaign Act - passed in 1971, this law is the primary source of regulation concerning political fundraising and spending. Later amendments would go on to establish the Federal Election Committee (FEC). Lobbying- communicating with a public official for the purpose of influencing the passage, defeat, amendment, or postponement of legislative or executive action. Megacorporation- a large collection of companies owned by a single parent company. Shadowban - when an individual(s)’ content isn’t shown to the public despite not being officially “banned” by the network. Actors “Big Oil” - the supermajors are considered to be BP, Chevron Corporation, ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Total and Eni (and sometimes ConocoPhillips). -
In Europe Big Open
Big & open in Europe A growth engine or a missed opportunity? Big and open data in Europe A growth engine or a missed opportunity? Sonia Buchholtz, Maciej Bukowski, Aleksander Śniegocki the Warsaw Institute for Economic Studies (WISE Institute) A report commissioned by demosEUROPA – Centre for European Strategy Foundation within the “Innovation and entrepreneurship” programme. Macroeconomic modelling and publication sponsored by Microsoft. Table of contents Abstract 2 Big data – will it unleash the full potential of computers? Introduction 1 Technological revolutions and general purpose Executive technologies Summary 3 Appendix A: Open data – Big and Open Data old resources Universal Impact but a new promise? Assessment model (BOUDICA) Summary & recommendations 4 Modelling the economic potential of big and open data in Literature Europe up to 2020 4 ↔ 5 Abstr act In this paper we discuss the economic potential of the current phase of the ICT revolution in Europe. We argue that a logical consequence of the exponential improvements in the computational power of inte- grated circuits and data storage capacities observed since the late 1960s, fi nds logical prolongation in the form of Big and Open data revolution. We support the view that ICT together with Big and Open data solutions reveal many features of General Purpose Technologies, and as such, have strong infl uence on the entire world economic system. We focus our quantitative analysis on Europe and with the help of a dedicated, bottom-up, macroeconomic model, which we call BOUDICA, we are able to estimate the economic potential of Big and Open data in all 28 EU member states. -
Impact of Opencourseware Publication on Higher Education Participation and Student Recruitment
Impact of OpenCourseWare Publication on Higher Education Participation and Student Recruitment Stephen Carson1, Sukon Kanchanaraksa2 (not shown), Ira Gooding2, Fred Mulder3, and Robert Schuwer3 1Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US 2Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, US 3Open Universiteit, The Netherlands Abstract The free and open publication of course materials (OpenCourseWare or OCW) was initially undertaken by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and other universities primar- ily to share educational resources among educators (Abelson, 2007). OCW, however, and more in general open educational resources (OER),1 have also provided well-documented opportunities for all learners, including the so-called “informal learners” and “independent learners” (Carson, 2005; Mulder, 2006, p. 35). Universities have also increasingly docu- mented clear benefits for specific target groups such as secondary education students and lifelong learners seeking to enter formal postsecondary education programs. In addition to benefitting learners, OCW publication has benefitted the publishing institu- tions themselves by providing recruiting advantages. Finally enrollment figures from some institutions indicate that even in the case of the free and open publication of materials from online programs, OCW does not negatively affect enrollment. This paper reviews evaluation conducted at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH), and Open Universiteit Nederland (OUNL) concerning OCW effects on higher education participation and student recruitment. Keywords: Distance education; open learning; open universities; distance universities; higher education; e-learning; online learning 1 In this paper we will use one reference term only (OCW), just for convenience and being fully aware of the definition differences between OCW and OER. Only in the case of possible misun- derstanding we refer specifically to OER. -
DIY CRISPR Christi J
NORTH CAROLINA LAW REVIEW Volume 97 Number 5 Legal, Ethical, and Policy Implications of Article 17 New Gene-Editing Technologies 6-1-2019 DIY CRISPR Christi J. Guerrini G. Evan Spencer Patricia J. Zettler Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.unc.edu/nclr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Christi J. Guerrini, G. E. Spencer & Patricia J. Zettler, DIY CRISPR, 97 N.C. L. Rev. 1399 (2019). Available at: https://scholarship.law.unc.edu/nclr/vol97/iss5/17 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Carolina Law Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in North Carolina Law Review by an authorized editor of Carolina Law Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 97 N.C. L. REV. 1399 (2019) DIY CRISPR* CHRISTI J. GUERRINI, G. EVAN SPENCER & PATRICIA J. ZETTLER** Although scientists have been manipulating genomes since the 1970s, the recent discovery of Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (“CRISPR”) has expanded the possibilities not only for what gene editing might accomplish but also who might accomplish it. Because CRISPR is relatively easy, efficient, and inexpensive, it is accessible to individuals— known as “citizen scientists”—who work in nontraditional laboratory settings and may not have formal scientific training. Prompted by concerns about human applications of CRISPR, the United States is cohosting a series of international summits on human gene editing, while organizations around the world race to issue their own reports and recommendations. For the most part, however, these efforts have focused on the use of CRISPR by professional scientists working in institutional settings who are already subject to layers of formal and informal oversight. -
Open IP Workgroup Report
Open Scholarship Initiative Proceedings, Volume 2, 2017, issn: 2473-6236 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13021/G8osi.1.2017.1935 Open IP Workgroup Report Joann Delenick, Donald Guy, Laurel Haak, Patrick Herron, Joyce Ogburn, Crispin Taylor Abstract / Workgroup Question As a new issue for OSI2017, this workgroup (originally designated as the Patent Literature workgroup) will look at patent literature, research reports, databases and other published in- formation. OSI by design has a university-centric and journal-centric bias to the perspectives being considered. Patent literature, research reports, and databases are also important sources of research information—more so than journals in some disciplines (although these still reference journal articles). As with journal articles, this information isn’t always free or easy to find and is suffering from some of the same usability issues as journal articles. workgroup concentrated our efforts on I. Framing and Scoping developing recommendations relevant to improving the discovery, access and use From the beginning of our workgroup of patent data and closely-related IP. discussions, we realized that the scope of our assigned topic, patent literature, was too II. What is Open IP? narrow in comparison to the range of in- tellectual property specified in the topic In the context of our discussions, the assignment. With patent literature, re- concept of Open IP could certainly relate search reports, and databases in mind, we to ideas of open innovation; we recognize, looked at the topic as a broader continu- however, that intellectual property, espe- um of intellectual property (IP). Our cially when operating within scholarly group began by defining intellectual property domains, can far exceed its role as a foun- as the set of objects comprised of artifacts dation for commercial innovation.