Day archives: July 22nd, 2024

Donald Trump wants to reinstate a spoils system in federal government by hiring political loyalists regardless of competence

If elected to serve a second term, Donald Trump says he supports a spoils system, a plan that would give him the authority to fire as many as 50,000 civil servants and replace them with members of his political party loyal to him. Under this plan, if he eventually deemed those new employees disloyal, he claims he could fire them too. Law professors Sidney Shapiro and Joseph P. Tomain write in their new book How Government Built America about how newly elected President Andrew Jackson, after he took office in 1828, fired about half the country’s civil servants and replaced them with loyal members of his political party. The result was not only an utterly incompetent administration, but widespread corruption.

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Subjects: Congress, Ethics, Legal Research, United States Law

How to Get a Discount on Your Car Insurance

As part of the reporting process for The Markup’s investigation into inequitable insurance pricing, they dug through more than 52,000 pages of documents that insurance companies filed with government regulators detailing their pricing algorithms. Aaron Sankin reports on the many different ways you can save some money on your car insurance, including built-in discounts that you could be taking advantage of. These discounts reward customers who could save insurers money in the long run by, say, taking steps to reduce their risk of getting in costly crashes or opting into features that lower companies’ administrative costs.

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Subjects: Economy, Financial System, Travel

Massive IT outage spotlights major vulnerabilities in the global information ecosystem

Professor Richard Forno highlights the fragility of our enterprise IT systems against the backdrop of the global information technology outage on July 19, 2024 that paralyzed organizations ranging from airlines to hospitals and the delivery of uniforms for the Olympic Games, representing a growing concern for cybersecurity professionals, businesses and governments.

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Subjects: Cybersecurity, Economy, Financial System, Health, Information Management, Software
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