Rao bulletin 1 January 2016 html edition this bulletin contains the following articles
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Notes
The Thrift Savings Plan also offers five Lifecycle Funds. The table below shows their historical performance since they became available for investment on 8/1/2005: [5]
TSP Lifecycle Funds The five TSP Lifecycle Funds are target retirement date funds, invested in a professionally designed mix of domestic and international stocks, bonds and government securities. Each L Fund is invested in the five individual TSP funds (G, F, C, S, and I Fund). TSP investors choose a fund based on when they expect to retire and start making withdrawals: • The TSP L 2050 Fund is for participants who will need their money in the year 2045 or later. • The TSP L 2040 Fund is for participants who will need their money between 2035 and 2044. • The TSP L 2030 Fund is for participants who will need their money between 2025 and 2034. • The TSP L 2020 Fund is for participants who will need their money between 2015 and 2024. • The TSP L Income Fund is for participants who are already withdrawing their accounts in monthly payments, or who plan to need their money between now and 2014. [Source: http://www.tspfolio.com/tspfunds December 31, 2015 ++] * General Interest * 
Notes of Interest ► 16 thru 31 Dec 2015
[Source: Various | December 31, 2015 ++] ********************************* Medical ID Theft ► 100 Million Records in 2015 There’s nearly a 1 in 3 chance that your medical records were compromised in 2015, according to Caleb Barlow, vice president of IBM Security. Barlow tells CNBC that retailers had their best year in the past five years in terms of information security. He says that it’s evidence that retailers are working hard to solve the problem with new security tools and technology like the chip and PINs. In the health care sector, however, high-profile breaches of major insurance companies like Anthem and Blue Cross made headlines this year. In fact, 100 million records were compromised by hackers, Barlow says. 
The current U.S. population is about 323 million. Barlow adds: “This represents basically about 1 in 3 Americans have had their health care records compromised over the course of this year.” The rise in medical identity theft is especially bad news for consumers. Barlow explains: “It’s stuck with you for the rest of your life, so this information in the health care record could be used 20 years from now to establish credit, file a tax return on your behalf, or file a false medical claim.” Medical data is also more valuable to hackers than financial data, according to the nonprofit Medical Identity Fraud Alliance. While stolen credit cards sell for a few dollars on the black market, electronic health records sell for as much as $50. To learn about how you can guard against medical identity theft, check out:
[Source: MoneyTalksNews | Karla Bowsher | December 29, 2015 ++] ********************************* US Voter Data Breach ► Information on 191 Million Voters An independent computer security researcher uncovered a database of information on 191 million voters that is exposed on the open Internet due to an incorrectly configured database, he said on 28 DEC. The database includes names, addresses, birth dates, party affiliations, phone numbers and emails of voters in all 50 U.S. states and Washington, researcher Chris Vickery said in a phone interview. Vickery, a tech support specialist from Austin, Texas, said he found the information while looking for information exposed on the Web in a bid to raise awareness of data leaks. Vickery said he could not tell whether others had accessed the voter database, which took about a day to download. 
Signs are pictured during a voter registration drive for National Voter Registration Day outside Convention Center in Los Angeles, California September 22, 2015. While voter data is typically considered public information, it would be time-consuming and expensive to gather a database of all American voters. A trove of all U.S. voter data could be valuable to criminals looking for lists of large numbers of targets for a variety of fraud schemes. "The alarming part is that the information is so concentrated," Vickery said. Vickery said he has not been able to identify who controls the database, but that he is working with U.S. federal authorities to find the owner so they can remove it from public view. He declined to identify the agencies. A representative with the Federal Bureau of Investigation declined to comment. A representative with the U.S. Federal Elections Commission, which regulates campaign financing, said the agency does not have jurisdiction over protecting voter records. Regulations on protecting voter data vary from state to state, with many states imposing no restrictions. California, for example, requires that voter data be used for political purposes only and not be available to persons outside of the United States. Privacy advocates said Vickery's findings were troubling. "Privacy regulations are required so a person’s political information can be kept private and safe,” said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Digital Democracy. The leak was first reported by CSO Online and Databreaches.net, computer and privacy news sites that Vickery said helped him attempt to locate the database's owner. CSO Online said the exposed information may have originally come from campaign software provider NationBuilder because the leak included data codes similar to those used by that firm. In a statement, NationBuilder Chief Executive Officer Jim Gilliam said the database was not created by the Los Angeles-based company, but that some of its information may have come from data it freely supplies to political campaigns. "From what we've seen, the voter information included is already publicly available from each state government, so no new or private information was released in this database," Gilliam said. [Source: Reuters | Jim Finkle and Dustin Volz | December 29, 2015 ++] ********************************* Federal Holidays ► 2016 Federal law (5 U.S.C. 6103) establishes the public holidays listed below for federal employees. Please note that most Federal employees work on a Monday through Friday schedule. For these employees, when a holiday falls on a non-workday -- Saturday or Sunday -- the holiday usually is observed on Monday (if the holiday falls on Sunday) or Friday (if the holiday falls on Saturday).
* This holiday is designated as "Washington's Birthday" in section 6103(a) of title 5 of the United States Code, which is the law that specifies holidays for Federal employees. Though other institutions such as state and local governments and private businesses may use other names, it is our policy to always refer to holidays by the names designated in the law. ** December 25, 2016 (the legal public holiday for Christmas Day), falls on a Sunday. For most Federal employees, Monday, December 26, will be treated as a holiday for pay and leave purposes. (See section 3(a) of Executive order 11582, February 11, 1971 [Source: http://www.myfederalretirement.com/public/2016-Federal-Holidays.cfm | Dec 2015 ++] ********************************* War on Xmas ► House Resolution 564 It’s the most uncomfortable time of the year. A group of conservatives in Congress do not want Christmas traditions and symbols to recede from public life. They have banded together in their fight to keep nativity scenes on display in town squares and the words “Merry Christmas” in our conversations this season. Republican Colorado Rep. Doug Lamborn introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives on 11 DEC that would affirm the body’s “sense” that Christmas should be protected House Resolution 564, which invokes the First Amendment, posits that references to religion or God should not be prohibited in civic dialogue: “Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That the House of Representatives — (1) recognizes the importance of the symbols and traditions of Christmas; (2) strongly disapproves of attempts to ban references to Christmas; and (3) expresses support for the use of these symbols and traditions by those who celebrate Christmas.” The resolution has been referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. According to Lamborn, seasonal religious expression must be protected for all Americans, and efforts to remove religious aspects of Christmas from the public space are not merely misguided — they are unconstitutional. “Christmas is a wonderful time of year when a majority of Americans take time to remember the humble birth of Jesus Christ on a holy night more than 2,000 years ago. The message of Christmas is one of love, hope, and peace,” Lamborn said in a statement. “It is a message that our country and this world needs more than ever in the midst of ever increasing conflict and chaos.” He takes issue with the “troubling effort by some in America” to eliminate “any and all Christmas celebrations and traditions from the public arena.” 
First lady Michelle Obama, accompanied by first dog Bo, reads “Twas the Night Before Christmas” to children at the Children’s National Health System in Washington on 14 DEC. Lamborn sent a letter to his colleagues in the House encouraging them to co-sponsor the resolution. The proposed resolution is only the latest volley in the annual so-called “War on Christmas.” Every year, social conservatives lament what they consider secular attempts to suppress the Christian holiday. Many others, however, contend that there is no such “war” and that Americans have simply become more culturally inclusive. Earlier this month, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion released a statement urging students not to throw Christmas parties because they might offend some students. “Holiday parties and celebrations should celebrate and build upon workplace relationships and team morale with no emphasis on religion or culture. Ensure your holiday party is not a Christmas party in disguise,” read the message, which has since been altered, according to the Daily Beast. University Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek apologized for the statement after it was roundly criticized in the media as tone deaf and an affront to free speech. “As an educational institution, it’s our job to listen and to learn,” he said in a news release. “We are sorry that we did not communicate very well. We’ve learned a lesson from this. We want to move forward and to focus on the big picture and our goals for creating and sustaining a learning environment where all community members and all points of view are valued and respected.” [Source: https://www.yahoo.com/politics | Michael Walsh | December 15, 2015 ++] ********************************* 114th Congress ► 2015 Performance | Comparatively Not Bad Lo and behold, Congress actually got some big things done this year. By just about any standard, the House and Senate passed more significant pieces of legislation in 2015 than at any point since President Obama’s first two years in office, when Democratic majorities gave him a raft of landmark policy achievements. The laws Congress enacted this year were not as expansive, but with Republicans controlling Capitol Hill for the first time since 2006, they were all bipartisan. The list of major congressional actions includes:
Using the last four years as a point of comparison is admittedly setting a low bar for judging the first session of the 114th Congress. As anyone paying even occasional attention to Washington politics could tell you, not much made it out of the Capitol between 2011 and 2014. The Republican-controlled House bickered with a Senate run by Democrats, and lawmakers lurched from one crisis to the next. Most of the noteworthy legislation that did pass—a deficit-reduction bill in 2011, the fiscal-cliff deal in 2013—were significant merely because they forestalled a calamity of Congress’s own making, not because they established new law or proactively addressed a national problem. And so although none of the legislation passed in 2015 matches, say, the Affordable Care Act or the 2009 economic stimulus package in scope, this year saw the House and Senate return to a semblance of normal governance. “They’ve really nailed down some festering issues that have been on the agenda for quite a while,” said Sarah Binder, a senior fellow who studies Congress at the Brookings Institution. “And they’ve done it in this sort of remarkably bipartisan way.” What changed? The first and most obvious difference is that Republicans took over the Senate majority. While this could have been the recipe for even more gridlock, new Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made a deliberate decision to demonstrate in his first year that Republicans could run, in his words, a “responsible, right-of-center governing majority.” The imperative, as he described to reporters early on, was to lay the groundwork for the 2016 election and to show voters that they needn’t be frightened of giving Republicans both the Congress and the White House. McConnell got off to a slow start, and GOP leaders stumbled in an early showdown with Democrats by withholding funds for the Department of Homeland Security in a standoff over immigration. But ultimately, McConnell delivered on his promise, and during year-end interviews and press conferences, he took a victory lap on leading a more open and productive Senate. “By any objective standard,” he said after the chamber closed up for the year, “the Senate is clearly back to work.” Yet because the Republican majority is not filibuster-proof, McConnell needed Democratic cooperation. For the most part, he got it. In the closing weeks of the year, Democrats pointed out that the issues on which Congress made progress—particularly the infrastructure and education bills—came out of the large backlog that had built up when they were in the majority. “All the things that my friends boast about, my Republican friends, we could have done years ago, but they obstructed them,” lamented Harry Reid, the former majority leader whom Republicans relegated to the minority. Senator Charles Schumer took the argument a step further: “The bills we’re passing reflect Democratic values,” he told reporters. “Even though we’re in the minority, we’re passing a program that we’ve been for all along.” Victory, of course, has a thousand fathers—or at least a couple hundred when a bill passes Congress. And much of the backslapping in the Capitol reflected the kind of credit-taking you’d expect from members of an institution held in low-esteem by most of the American public. Democrats may have helped Republicans pass bills that aligned with their priorities, but they were frustrated that the GOP took no action to combat climate change, address gun violence, raise the minimum wage, or overhaul the nation’s immigration—all key parts of Obama’s agenda. The final flurry of legislation came after a period of intense turmoil in the House, when Speaker John Boehner resigned rather than face a revolt by conservatives in the Republican conference. While most of the significant bills were in the works before Boehner left, lawmakers said his departure created more political space for Paul Ryan to steer them over the finish line. “Over a period of time, Speaker Boehner had lost some gravitas within the conference, and Paul hasn’t,” said Representative Reed Ribble, a Wisconsin Republican. If nothing else, Ryan made productive use of the honeymoon afforded him by the conservatives who would raise objections whenever Boehner brought legislation they didn’t like to the floor. Binder said the combination of McConnell and Ryan in the two leadership posts “probably greased the skids.” There was, she said, “a little more willingness to clean out the barn, get it going, and put these behind them to focus on 2016.” Will the bipartisan bonhomie continue in the new year? Expectations for major legislative action are always low in a presidential-election year. The ripest area for bipartisanship is criminal-justice reform, which has attracted the interest of lawmakers from across the political spectrum. Obama has listed it as a priority, and advocates believe they have a small window early in the year before the presidential and legislative primary campaigns make a major bill impossible. But despite passage of Trade Promotion Authority earlier this year, there is a dwindling likelihood that Congress will approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership before the election. Obama also is expected to press Congress to act on his plan to finally close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, to formally authorize the use of military force against the Islamic State, and to address gun violence. In a year-end news conference, he sounded realistic about the low chances that lawmakers will move on any of those priorities. Yet as he considered a legislature that has so often frustrated him, the president added, “Every once in a while, they’ll surprise you.” They certainly did in 2015. [Source: The Atlantic | Russell Berman | December 23, 2015 ++] ********************************* Yüklə 0,83 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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