Podcasts about title ii

In Episode 131 of White Canes Connect, host David Goldstein shares highlights from a powerful panel on digital accessibility and the expanded scope of ADA Title II, which now includes websites, mobile apps, and digital documents of publicly funded institutions. Moderated by Thomas DiAgostino and facilitated by JEME Agency and Accessible Pharmacy Services for the Blind, the panel features four experts from diverse backgrounds: Jamie Ray-Leonetti (Institute on Disabilities at Temple University), Adrienne Moore (Office for People with Disabilities, Philadelphia), architect Ricardo J. Rodríguez De Santiago, and Goldstein himself. The discussion centers on the DOJ's 2024 Title II update, requiring compliance with WCAG 2.1 AA standards. Panelists explore implementation challenges, legal obligations, and the critical role of inclusive design. Moore outlines Philadelphia's proactive strategies, while Rodríguez emphasizes human-centered design and breaking common accessibility misconceptions. Goldstein draws from lived experience, highlighting real-world digital barriers and the need to involve disabled users directly. Ray-Leonetti underscores the urgency of embedding accessibility into policy and organizational culture—not just for compliance, but as a moral imperative. This episode is both a rallying cry and a practical guide for anyone building digital spaces. Accessibility isn't extra—it's essential. Show notes at https://www.whitecanesconnect.com/131      Links Mentioned Have you checked out Federation Focus yet? https://www.youtube.com/@nfbofpa/  JEME Agency: https://www.jeme.agency  Accessible Pharmacy Services for the Blind: https://www.accessiblepharmacy.com  Sip. Savor. Support. Keystone Chapter fundraiser at Landmark Americana: https://nfbofpa.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Sip-Savor-Support-FINAL-TROY.pdf  Attend PA Association of Blind Merchants Spring Fling Blind Vendor Showcase: https://www.pablindmerchants.org/fling/  Exhibit at PA Association of Blind Merchants Spring Fling!: https://www.pablindmerchants.org/exhibit/  Be a sponsor of PA Association of Blind Merchants: https://www.pablindmerchants.org/sponsor/  An Easy Way to Help the NFB of PA Support the NFB of PA with every purchase at White Cane Coffee Company by going to https://www.whitecanecoffee.com/ref/nfbp. When you use that link to purchase from White Cane Coffee, the NFB of PA earns a 10% commission! Share the link with your family and friends! Listen to Erin and Bob Willman from White Cane Coffee on episode 072 of White Canes Connect. Donate to the NFB of PA Like what you hear on White Canes Connect? Support us and donate to the National Federation of the Blind of Pennsylvania, visit https://www.NFBofPA.org/give/. We Want to Hear Your Story Reach out with questions and comments, or share ideas! We want to hear from you. Call us at (267) 338-4495 or at whitecanesconnect@gmail.com. Follow White Canes Connect Find out why White Canes Connect is currently ranked at #13 of the 100 Best Visually Impaired Podcast. Find the show on: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/white-canes-connect/id1592248709  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1YDQSJqpoteGb1UMPwRSuI  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@pablindpodcast 

20250215 Demand Our Access Originally Broadcasted February 15, 2025, on ACB Media 5   Jonathan discussed our rights under Title II of the ADA. He is doing this again because it was the first topic covered in Demand Our Access.   Sponsored by: Demand Our Access     Find out more at https://acb-community.pinecast.co

Episode 98 – Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) This month on Calendar Call, Paul Bourdoulous talks with Sandra Lugo-Gines, Program Manager for the Superior Court Operations Division about the Americans with Disabilities Act with a specific focus on Title II and public services offered by the Connecticut Judicial Branch. Paul and Sandra discuss what the ADA is, the scope of disability, and the requirements of the Judicial Branch to comply with Title II. Additional topics include common services provided, requests for accommodation, service animals, and more. Title II ADA.gov Rehabilitation Act of 1973 Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 Centralized ADA Office Email: ADAprogram@jud.ct.gov or Call: 860-706-5310

New Federal ADA Regulation Deadlines Are Approaching – Is Your Institution Ready? Colleges and universities must now meet stricter ADA compliance requirements for websites and digital content or risk legal consequences, fines,  and loss of federal funding. With the Department of Justice's latest update to Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), institutions must ensure all web content, mobile apps, and digital resources meet WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standards. For many schools, the deadline is approaching fast. In this episode of Changing Higher Ed®, host Dr. Drumm McNaughton has a conversation with Eugene Woo, CEO and founder of Venngage, to discuss what these new ADA regulations mean for higher education institutions and what they must do to comply. Understanding the New ADA Requirements for Higher Ed The Department of Justice's update to Title II clarifies long-standing accessibility expectations, removing ambiguity about digital compliance. Now, all institutions receiving federal funds—including financial aid, research grants, or disaster relief—must ensure their online content adheres to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1. AA The key changes include: Explicit standards for websites and mobile apps – Digital accessibility is no longer optional. Clearer rules on compliance deadlines – Larger institutions (50,000+ students) must comply by April 2026, while smaller institutions have until April 2027. Greater enforcement risks – ADA lawsuits have historically driven accessibility improvements, and these new regulations are meant to make institutions proactive rather than reactive. Woo explains that many universities operate hundreds, if not thousands, of websites across different departments and programs, making compliance a daunting task. Why ADA Compliance Matters for Colleges and Universities Accessibility Isn't Just a Legal Obligation—It's a Universal Design Best Practice Woo highlights that designing for accessibility benefits everyone, not just individuals with disabilities. Features like captions for videos were initially created for the hearing impaired but are now widely used by all viewers. The Biggest Accessibility Challenges for Higher Ed Websites According to WebAIM's annual survey of the top one million websites, these are the most common accessibility issues: Missing alt text for images – Over 50% of homepage images lack descriptions, making content inaccessible to screen readers. Poor form accessibility – Online forms frequently lack proper labels, creating barriers for those using assistive technology. Non-descriptive links and buttons – Generic link text (e.g., “Click here”) makes navigation difficult for screen reader users. Inaccessible PDFs – Many course materials, syllabi, and administrative documents are in PDF format but lack proper tagging and readability. Color contrast issues – Up to 20% of men have some form of color blindness, yet many websites fail to meet the contrast requirements. 3. What Institutions Should Prioritize First Given the scale of most universities' digital footprints, Woo recommends: Conducting an ADA compliance audit to identify accessibility gaps. Prioritizing high-traffic pages and critical student services for remediation. Implementing universal design principles in new content to prevent future accessibility issues. How Universities Can Ensure ADA Compliance Designating Leadership Responsibility Presidents and institutional leaders must appoint a compliance officer or team responsible for ensuring accessibility across all digital platforms. Without clear ownership, accessibility efforts can fall through the cracks. Leverage AI and Automated Accessibility Tools for ADA Compliance Woo notes that institutions can use AI-powered tools to scan websites for accessibility violations and assist in remediation. Some platforms can even auto-correct PDFs and web pages to bring them closer to WCAG 2.1 standards. Budgeting for Digital Accessibility Compliance Compliance isn't just a policy issue—it requires financial investment. Schools must allocate resources for accessibility audits, technology upgrades, and training to ensure long-term compliance. Three Key Takeaways for Higher Education Leaders Determine whether your institution must comply—and by when Institutions receiving any federal funding must meet the new standards, with large universities facing an April 2026 deadline. Appoint a leader or team to oversee accessibility compliance Without clear accountability, compliance efforts will stall. Universities must assign responsibility to IT, compliance, or academic leadership teams. Invest in accessibility tools and training ADA compliance isn't just a one-time fix. Schools should budget for ongoing accessibility improvements, staff training, and technological upgrades. Higher education institutions can no longer afford to overlook digital accessibility. With the DOJ's new enforcement push, now is the time to act. Listen to the full episode for more insights from Eugene Woo and practical strategies for making your institution's digital content fully accessible. Read the podcast transcript on our website: https://changinghighered.com/ada-compliance-in-higher-education/ #HigherEducation #ADACompliance #HigherEdPodcast About Our Podcast Guest Eugene Woo is the CEO and founder of Venngage, an infographic design platform that enables users to create compelling and accessible visual content. With over two decades of experience in software engineering and product development, Eugene has a strong background in engineering and a passion for visual storytelling. Prior to Venngage, he founded Vizualize.Me, a platform for creating visual résumés, which was acquired by Parchment in 2013. Eugene holds a Master of Science in Planning from the University of Toronto and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology Connect with Eugene Woo on LinkedIn → About the Podcast Host Dr. Drumm McNaughton is the founder, CEO, and Principal Consultant at The Change Leader, Inc. A highly sought-after higher education consultant with 20+ years of experience, Dr. McNaughton works with leadership, management, and boards of U.S. and international institutions. His expertise spans key areas, including accreditation, governance, strategic planning, presidential onboarding, mergers, acquisitions, and strategic alliances. Dr. McNaughton's approach combines a holistic methodology with a deep understanding of the contemporary and evolving challenges facing higher education institutions worldwide to ensure his clients succeed in their mission. Connect with Drumm McNaughton on LinkedIn→

This year, we commemorated National Disabilities Employment Awareness Month by exploring how employers can work toward providing access to good jobs for persons with disabilities in the legal profession; the tangible benefits of employing persons with disabilities; the feasibility of providing accommodations; and the use of assistive technology. Our speakers provided their thoughts on best practices, shared personal journeys and insights, and reflected on how far employers have come and where we need to focus to increase future employment opportunities for persons with disabilities in the legal profession and beyond. Our guests included Kevin Hara: Counsel, Reed Smith; Ronza Othman: President, National Association of Blind Government Employees – a division of the National Federation of the Blind; Nicholas Carden: Associate General Counsel, Coinbase, and former Board Member of Disability:IN; and Laurie Allen: Microsoft, Senior Accessibility Technology Evangelist. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Welcome to the Reed Smith Podcast, Inclusivity Included, Powerful Personal Stories. In each episode of this podcast, our guests will share their personal stories, passions, and challenges, past and present, all with a goal of bringing people together and learning more about others. You might be surprised by what we all have in common, Inclusivity Included.  Kevin: Hello, everybody. Welcome back to an episode of Inclusivity Included. Thank you, everyone, for joining. My name is Kevin Hara. I'm counsel at Reed Smith in the Life Sciences and Health Industries Group, and I'm proud to commemorate National Disabilities Employment Awareness Month, which is in October of every year. And this year's theme is access to good jobs for all. We have a number of distinguished panelists today joining us, including Ronza Othman, who is president of the National Association of Blind Government Employees, a division of the National Federation of the Blind. Nick Carden, associate general counsel from Coinbase, a former board member of Disability:IN. And Laurie Allen from Microsoft, a senior accessibility technology evangelist. So thank you, Ronza, Nick, and Laurie for joining us. We're thrilled to have you here as part of our podcast. And without further ado, I would like to ask Ronza to talk a little bit about your journey, how you have arrived where you are, and some of the important steps you took that led you to where you are today.  Ronza: Great. Thank you so much. I'm really delighted to be here. I am a blind attorney and my training was initially as a high school STEM teacher. And that's what I did to get myself through law school. And ultimately I've had a number of different legal jobs, but in state and local government and private sector, ultimately ended up in the federal government where now I manage civil rights programs for a large federal agency. And so my journey has been one of exploration and learning, not only because, you know, being a lawyer, an attorney is always difficult for any person, but also when you add the complications of inaccessible technology and perceptions about people with disabilities and what they can and cannot do, and the obstacles that those negative attitudes create, there's definitely been some really interesting experiences along the way, but I think that I'm optimistic in terms of where we are now. So my paid job, of course, is with the government. And as a volunteer, I serve as the president of the National Association of Blind Government Employees, where we have a number of blind and low vision employees of state, local, federal, and pseudo-government agencies that are members that are experiencing life as public servants, supporting this country at the local and state and national level. It is an honor to represent them and us in a variety of different circumstances, and I've gotten to do a lot of really cool things as a result.  Kevin: That's great. Thank you so much, Ronza. And Nick, if you'd like to share a little bit about your path that led you to where you are today.  Nicholas: Thanks, Kevin. And thanks to Reed Smith for having us. This is a great opportunity to speak about an important issue that impacts all of us on this call. I, like Ronza, I am a lawyer with a disability. I started my career right out of law school in-house, which is somewhat unusual, but it sort of led me to where I am today in the sense that early in my career, I was a true corporate generalist, and through various personnel changes and responsibility changes, I was at a consumer products manufacturing company and had the opportunity to pick up some, advertising and marketing and entertainment legal work. And I really enjoyed that type of work. It's a lot of fun. It's fast paced and it's highly creative and interesting work. So I've stayed in that sort of practice area as an in-house lawyer through my career to today where at Coinbase, I lead a global marketing legal team.  Kevin: Great. Thank you, Nick. And Laurie, we'd love to hear a little bit about the path you took to where you are today.  Laurie: Thanks, Kevin. And thank you again for inviting us to join you to talk about this great topic. So I am not an attorney. I work at Microsoft, as you mentioned. And I've been in tech for about 30 years. I've only been at Microsoft for a little over two. But my journey actually into accessibility started about nine and a half years ago when I had a spinal cord injury. and became quadriplegic. The only thing that didn't dramatically change about my life in that moment was my ability to do my job. And that's because of accessible technology that was available to me. And frankly, my job was quite literally a lifeline for me. So I'm so grateful that people came before me to create this technology. And about three years ago, I had this epiphany. How did this technology get created? And who built it? And why am I not part of the solution. So that's when I started pivoting my career into accessibility. So I feel quite fortunate to be in a role where I can combine my background in technology with my lived experience as a person with disability to help empower others like me, find meaningful employment, and succeed and thrive.  Kevin: Thank you so much. All of you have had such unique experiences and out to the successful careers that you are now engaged in today, but it hasn't always been easy for persons with disabilities in the legal profession and other professions to succeed. So I'd like to stay with you, Laurie, and to ask you, what do you believe are some of the barriers or challenges for persons with disabilities to find access to good jobs?  Laurie: And I think Ronza had mentioned it earlier, it's access to technology. It's discoverability, I find, that can be a barrier. People just don't know what technologies are available to support them in their work environments. And beyond that, it's finding companies who've built inclusive work environments for employees with disabilities, so that when they go through the interview process, they feel included, they feel supported, and as they're onboarded and as they can continue through their career. And then understanding that there are platforms that are available, like Mentra, for example, is a Microsoft partner. It's an amazing neurodiversity hiring platform. But I think just knowing what's available is sometimes quite difficult. And, you know, when people incur a disability like I did, they're starting from scratch, and they don't know what to ask for because it's a new environment for them.  Kevin: Thank you. That's a really good point. Having the access to the proper tools is key for anybody with a disability to succeed in any career path. Ronza, how about your perspective? How would you characterize some of the challenges people are facing and ways to overcome them?  Ronza: I think that the biggest challenge that the people with disabilities are really facing in terms of employment and just moving about society and contributing meaningfully in employment settings, but also in every setting, is the negative attitudes that people at large have about disability. Negative stereotypes. The unemployment rate for people with disabilities in the United States is over 50%. The unemployment rate for people who are blind and low vision in the United States is half again that almost at 75%. It's currently at 73%. That's mind boggling. These are people who want to work for the most part, but can't because nobody will hire them or because they don't have the proper training to be able to perform the jobs where there is a need. But all that really comes down to society's low expectations for people with disabilities and the barriers, artificial, usually, that society creates and puts in our way. One of the things that I really like to do as a hiring manager is I love meeting with and interviewing people with disabilities because they're so creative in their problem-solving. Their solutioning is out of the box thinking. And just to get to work in the morning, to get to the job, they have to have solved a whole bunch of problems in an environment, in a situation, in a society, not necessarily built for them. Whether it's the broken elevator, or whether it's the bus that didn't roll up to the bus stop where it was supposed to, or whether it's the technology that didn't work because somebody pushed a security update, so it broke its ability to communicate with assistive technology, or whether it's somebody, a well-meaning, you know, abled person who decided that they know where this person is trying to go and they're going to force them to go there as opposed to where the person is actually trying to go. All of those things, people with disabilities problem solve before they, you know, really start their day or as they're starting their day. And so I think we don't give enough credit to the workforce of folks with disabilities in terms of what they can do, what they have done, frankly, and then society just has negative expectations. The biggest aspect of disability isn't the disability itself. It's people without disabilities or people who don't understand disabilities who get in our way.  Nicholas: I'd love to add to that because I agree with a lot of that. And I think thinking about access to jobs, the question that comes to mind to me is, do employers want to hire persons with disabilities. And I think there's no clear answer to that. And obviously, companies themselves are just made up of other human beings. And so there's, to Ronza's point, the stigma attached to hiring persons with disabilities is ever present. But I'll share specifically in the legal industry, I think this industry does a particularly poor job of being intentional about hiring a truly diverse workforce. And this is, I'm calling out the legal industry as somebody who's in it, but I don't think it's unique to the legal industry in the sense that I still don't think when law firms are hiring for diverse candidates that they make a particular effort to recruit persons with disabilities. I think it can be as simple as asking for a voluntary disclosure on an application. And I still don't think as an industry we're doing those types of things. So there seem to be opportunities if the answer to the question of do you want to hire persons with disabilities is yes.  Ronza: I'll just add to that, if I may. When you look at the United States census data on people with disabilities, somewhere between 20% and 25% of the population of this country has a disability. When you look at the census in the legal profession, when you look at the numbers in the legal profession, and the American Bar Association has done extensive research trying to sort this out, figure it out, as some other entities, it's less than 1%. Less than 1% of attorneys in the United States are willing to disclose that they have a disability. And those who are, it's usually an obvious or very visible disability, as opposed to some of these hidden disabilities that there's still so much stigma in the legal profession around. In the regular generic work industry generally, not specifically the legal profession, but everywhere, there's this misconception that it's going to be really expensive to hire somebody with a disability because you have to accommodate them or you have to adjust schedules or policies and so forth and so on. The Job Accommodation Network, which is a free resource to employers and employees about what's available in terms of reasonable accommodations for those with disabilities, did a study and they determined that the average cost of a reasonable accommodation is less than $100. So talking about negative attitudes and negative perceptions, one of them for employers, It's that it's going to cost me a lot of money or somehow the work I'm going to receive from this person is going to be less in terms of quality or quantity than other non-disabled employees and so forth and so on. And all of that is just not accurate. It's not supported by research and it's certainly not supported by those of us in the community with lived experience in the workforce.  Kevin: That's an excellent point, Ronza, and Nick as well. You both have captured the problem that we're facing in providing good jobs to persons with disabilities. I think dispelling the myths and misconceptions is one of the important steps. And I also think technology can play an important role. We alluded to this a little bit more, but Laurie, if you would like to speak a little bit more about how technology can really help people with disabilities succeed.  Laurie: Thanks, Kevin. So the way we approach it at Microsoft is we build with the community, not for the community. We mentioned it in the last question. We bring people with lived experience into our company. We want that diverse lived experience in our product making. I have a spinal cord injury. I know what it's like to have a mobility disability. I don't know what it's like to be blind and rely on a screen reader. And I can't assume what someone who uses a screen reader needs. So we take an approach of building in early. We build in accessibility into the design phase of our product development life cycle. We bring testers in who have different types of disabilities to test our products before we release them. And what we find, and Ron's mentioned it earlier, is that we get really creative solutions because, as she mentioned, we have to be creative to get out the door every morning. And when we do this, we find that everyone benefits. When we call it Built for One, Extend to Many. When we build with the disability community, everyone benefits. And I'll give you an example. For example, live captions were built for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, but 50% of Americans watch videos with live captions on, and if you narrow that down to Gen Z, it goes up to about 80%. So when we build for people with disabilities, everyone benefits.  Kevin: I think that's a really astute observation. It's not just about helping one particular segment, but including people with disabilities when you're building the technology is really important. And, you know, I couldn't thank you more for that approach, Laurie, because, you know, I also have a mobility disability, a spinal cord injury. So I understand from my perspective. But as you said, I wouldn't be able to talk about or understand what the needs of a person with a visual or other disability might be. So that's really good. And Ronza or Nick, would you like to weigh in on technology, how it has helped you, or how do you think it can help others?  Ronza: So technology really is, it leveled the playing field for many populations within the disability community. And so, for example, for the blind community, so much of the information that we receive is visual. So much as paper had historically been paper-based but you know street signs billboards all of the things that happen visually and on the computer though now we can have access to that same information or I can go to an ATM machine and I can plug in my headphones and I can pull out my money I can go to a voting booth in most states and I can privately and independently but vote my ballot. You know there's still places where of course there's work to do but in general the proliferation of technology solutions over the last 20 or 30 years has really made a huge impact on our ability to access information engage in the world and especially with our jobs, so whether it's a screen reader or whether it's a software that's used that is speech to text for those with manual dexterity challenges or whether it's a foot pedal instead of a mouse or whatever the case may be. There's just been such advances in technology that have made it more possible for an individual with a disability to work in so many different fields. Think about all the technology that exists now. Surgeons are doing surgery with robots some of the time. Technology is super cool. It's super advanced and it's only going to get more and more advanced. And so hopefully that means that participation of the disability community at work and in other places is also going to increase. Now, the drawback is, the more innovated the technology, the more risk of potential opportunities to make it inaccessible. And so we have to be really careful when we embrace technology because that's really important, but that it also is accessible. It is compatible with that assistive technology that I mentioned, but also that we're not so focused on creativity and innovation that we're cutting people out that we've recently gave access to these platforms and applications. And we're seeing that. We are seeing technology become less inclusive in lots of different spaces. And then, you know, so build it accessibly, you know, talking to our friends at Microsoft and everywhere else who are thinking about this every day. But also, whether we're building technology or whether we're building buildings or physical spaces or virtual spaces, you know, thinking about what does it mean for us to be inclusive? Who are we building for? And not related to technology, but when we started putting in curb cuts when the ADA was passed, that was primarily done for people who were using wheelchairs and other kinds of mobility devices. And now the population that is the most vocal, the biggest fans, are parents and caregivers of small children that are pushing strollers. And so, you know, again, that sort of universal effort, the Ray-Ban Metaglasses is another example. It wasn't built for people with disabilities, but people with disabilities are using it because it had inclusive universal design built into it. We're using it to read menus and help with navigation indoor and outdoor and wayfinding and all sorts of amazing things happening with technology and beyond. So the key is it's fabulous, but we also have to make sure that it stays fabulous by being inclusive and accessible.  Laurie: You make such a good point there, Ronza, and I think with this wave of generative AI and everyone racing to get products to market, it's more important than ever to be rigorous and disciplined in continuing to build accessibility in from the beginning and test it thoroughly all the way through before it's released.  Ronza: 100%.  Kevin: Ronza and Laurie, those are excellent points that you made. And I really think technology will go a long way to helping people with disabilities of all types become part of the workforce, become part of the legal profession. And I think we have all lived through recently the pandemic that, you know, was affected everyone, not just persons with disabilities. But I think one of the things that came out of that was the importance of remote work and how that can really change the landscape. And Nick, I believe Coinbase is, you said, almost all remote. So can you comment on how that has impacted you and how you think that affects people with disabilities in terms of having access to jobs?  Nicholas: Yeah, Coinbase is a remote first company. So everyone in the company has the option to be remote first. We do have some office locations in some major cities if some people feel like they want to go into an office, but there's no requirement to do that. And in my view, I don't know that remote work benefits just persons with disabilities. I think we can all agree that it benefits a lot more groups than just persons with disabilities. To me, the bottom line of the benefit of remote work is it levels the playing field for everyone. So if we're all remote, we don't. There's no small group or other group or specific individual or groups of individuals that have to worry about what's happening in an office. Are some people getting ahead by having lunches or just getting that face time that they otherwise aren't able to do to be into the office? Whether that's because they live somewhere else where the office isn't, or they're a person with a disability and it's not easy to get into the office, or for any other reason of why it doesn't make sense. I think specifically for parents with children who are working. Remote work is a great benefit. So I love what remote work does for everyone. And it's been a real benefit. I think Coinbase deserves a lot of credit. For being one of the first companies in I think it was may of 2020 to decide that is how we're going to operate our company we think we can do it effectively and so far now you know four plus years later they're doing really well and um i don't have any knowledge that that Coinbase is changing their practices but it works very well for Coinbase and I'm sort of discouraged to see some of these companies deciding to go to a hybrid or fully return to office status. But obviously, that's their decision. And the people that are making that are thinking that it's in their best interest. I just don't know how much input they're getting from a voice of someone with a person with a disability.  Laurie: One other point is it expands the talent pool that employers can recruit from. They're not limited to just their area or just the people who can come into the office, but it really broadens that talent pool and once again, enables them to bring a more diverse workforce into their organization.  Ronza: So I'll say that, you know, in the government workforce, we have seen this switch, right? So prior to the pandemic, there were some people that were working remotely, but not very many because the perception was, no, no, no, we can't do this work remote in a remote way. We need to serve the people, the public, etc. And then the pandemic happened and bam, we have to work remotely in order to serve the people. And then everything was moving along. And I think that was really the renaissance for the disability community and government. And then government started shifting back to more in-person presence and more and more in-person presence. And the thought was, well, if you need to work from home, you can request a reasonable accommodation. And while that's true, it can be very isolating. If we're not building work, community. In a way that's hybrid or in a way that is inclusive of those that are working from home for whatever reason, then we are excluding those people. And so giving them the ability to work from home as a reasonable accommodation, if that's the solution, it can't be the only solution because what it does is it creates a different expectation and standard and isolation. And all these people with a disability are over here and everyone else is over here. And so I think employers need to really be thinking mindfully about what a hybrid work environment looks like and how to ensure inclusion for those who, for whatever reason, are working from home all or much of the time. And we can do it. We have done it. We've been very creative in the last five years. But I think we're just not thinking about it. We're letting the economic and other considerations and, you know, the ease. My favorite phrase that people give me was, well, we need people in the building because of line of sight supervision. And I always say, well, I'm a manager and I'm blind. So line of sight supervision doesn't do anything for me. Are you saying I'm not as good of a manager as you? And then, you know, they don't mean it that way, but that's how it comes off. And that's really how they're thinking. They're thinking they have to be in my space for me to effectively manage them, which we have proven doesn't have to be the case. In fact, we can be very effective as if not more productive with people in their own comfortable environment.  Kevin: Ronza, you expressed that better than I could ever have done. I think that's a really important aspect of remote work. It could not put anyone at a disadvantage or be isolating. With the last couple minutes we have left, I'd just like to hear from everyone about where we have come from and what you'd like to see in the future, some progress we've made, and where you think we still need to improve. So Nick, if you'd like to talk a little bit about that.  Nicholas: Yeah, I'll say I can recall an instance about 12, 13 years ago, maybe, where I was interested in a summer internship with a law firm. And I noticed they had a diversity recruitment event, something like that. And they were looking for women and ethnically diverse or persons of color to attend. And I recall thinking to myself, well, I am a white male, but if they're looking for diverse candidates, I would assume that they would be interested in a person with a disability. So I emailed the firm's event organizer and I sort of posed the question of, can I attend? And of course the answer was yes, but it really goes to show where we were 12 to 14 years ago. And we may still be there in terms of what diversity is and or how law firms specifically view diversity. It may just be that they focus on these two categories. And that is a fine thing. It's just not an inclusive thing. I sort of commend the efforts. And I think we've gone farther than that over the past 12 to 14 years. But if we want to create an inclusive industry, doing so in an exclusive manner is not going to get us there. And I would encourage firms in their recruitment efforts to think about all of the minority groups or underrepresented groups in this industry and make intentional efforts to be inclusive for all of them.  Kevin: Thank you, Nick. Ronza, would you like to add?  Ronza: Sure, I 100% agree. I think that it's not just in the legal profession, it's in a lot of professions that the focus on diversity has been on race and gender and, you know, the SOGI areas. And there hasn't been as much advancement with disability, but this is certainly an opportunity. The American Bar Association currently has a campaign called the Be Counted Campaign for lawyers specifically and those in the legal profession who do have disabilities who can, you know, confidentially essentially be counted as a member of the disability community so that we can get a better number of who in fact is in this profession because we know it's not half a percent. You know, we know it's more than that. And we need to eliminate the stigma in this and every profession for those that are comfortable, psychologically safe, identifying as people with disabilities, even if it's anonymized, to be able to do so. I am optimistic in terms of where we're headed. I think the effort that we've put forward as a disability community and nothing about us without us has really tremendously borne some fruit. And I think though there's work to do, I think we've come a long way. I think that the ADA regulations on Title II that were the Department of Justice released are going to be a game changer. I think that when the Title III regulations are released, whenever that is, it's going to be another huge game changer. I think that Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act is very, very much in need of a refresh and some updates. And when that happens, and I know there's some effort in Congress already, that's going to help. And I think some of the fundamental civil rights laws and protections in states and in the federal sector are going to continue this progress. But those are just the underpinning. It's the attitudes of people. It's listening to a podcast like this and learning about people you didn't think about before or aspects you didn't think about before, and then becoming a good ally to those communities. If you are in the community and feel comfortable speaking up with your lived experience, that's going to be a game changer too. 25% of this country. That's who we are. And so everybody knows somebody. Everybody has a family member who is a person with a disability who've experienced some of these challenges. Listen to their stories. Ask about their stories. Educate yourself and become a good ally so that the next generation has an easier time. That's what I'm excited about because I see it happening much more often. And I think it will continue to happen in this generation and the ones to come.  Kevin: Thank you so much. Laurie, how about you? what do you see in the future?  Laurie: Well, I think these are all such great points. And I'm going to go back to Nick's example. You know, I think historically DE&I has included, you know, a lot of minority groups except the disability community. And more and more, as I'm speaking with, you know, our enterprise customers, they're starting to add accessibility into that equation and really target disability hiring and bringing disabled talent into their pipelines. A lot of organizations are creating neurodiversity centers of excellence and neurodiversity hiring programs to specifically target that part of the population. So like Ronza said, I'm encouraged and I'm seeing this become a much higher priority for our enterprise customers. And again, to echo what she just said, I think the more we talk about it, the more we have podcasts and people listen to podcasts, the more comfortable and confident we get. I think we don't talk about accessibility because we're uncomfortable talking about disability, because people are afraid they're going to say the wrong thing. And at some point, we are all going to say the wrong thing, and that's okay. It's a learning opportunity for all of us. So again, thank you for the opportunity for us to come together today and talk about this really, really important topic.  Kevin: Well, I just want to say very heartfelt thanks to all of you, Laurie, Ronza, and Nick for all of your insights today, for your time, and for the lessons you've shared with us. I think people will really get a lot out of this. And for our listeners, thank you for joining us for Inclusivity Included, and please stay tuned for future episodes. Thanks, everyone.  Outro: Inclusivity Included is a Reed Smith production. Our producers are Ali McCardell and Shannon Ryan. You can find our podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, reedsmith.com, and our social media accounts.  Disclaimer: This podcast is provided for educational purposes. It does not constitute legal advice and is not intended to establish an attorney-client relationship, nor is it intended to suggest or establish standards of care applicable to particular lawyers in any given situation. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Any views, opinions, or comments made by any external guest speaker are not to be attributed to Reed Smith LLP or its individual lawyers.   All rights reserved.  Transcript is auto-generated.

September 9, 2024 Rockingham County Board Of Education MeetingAGENDA1. Call to Order1.01 Roll Call2. Announcements2.01 The Teacher of the Year banquet is scheduled for Tuesday, September 24, 2024, at 6:00 p.m. at Oakhaven Properties, 1434 Dibrell Road, Pelham, NC.2.02 There is a work session scheduled for Monday, September 23, 2024, beginning at 12:00 noon at Reidsville Middle School Media Center, 1903 South Park Drive, Reidsville, NC.2.03 The next Board Meeting is scheduled for Monday, October 14, 2024. The meeting begins at 6:00 p.m. at Central Administrative Offices located at 511 Harrington Highway, Eden, NC.2.04 Access the latest agendas from the Rockingham County Board of Education by following these steps: Go to go.boarddocs.com/nc/rock/Board.nsf/Public Click on "Meetings." Select the date of the meeting you're interested in. Choose "View the Agenda."3. Moment of Prayer3.01 Rev. Christi Taylor from Woodmont United Methodist Church, Reidsville, NC4. Pledge of Allegiance/Approval of Agenda/Recognitions4.01 Pledge of Allegiance4.02 Approval of Agenda4.03 Recognition - FFA Silver Chapter Award - Dr. Stover and Ms. Nina Walls5. Public Comments / Board Comments5.01 Public Comments - At this time the board will hear public comments5.02 Board Comments6. Consent Agenda6.01 Consent Approval - Gifts, Grants and Donations - Ms. Annie Ellis6.02 Consent Approval - Head Start Program Monthly Budget Update - Ms. Annie Ellis6.03 Consent Approval - Adoption of Board Policies - Dr. Cindy Corcoran6.04 Consent Approval - Updated Appraisal for McMichael High School Public Utility Easement - Ms. Erselle Young6.05 Consent Approval - Vendor Approval for Roof Replacements at Central and Lincoln Elementary School - Ms. Erselle Young6.06 Consent Approval - Federal Programs Grants Approval (Title I, Migrant, ESL, Title II, Rural Low Income Schools) - Dr. Charles Perkins6.07 Consent Approval - Meeting Minutes for Board Approval - Open Session Board Meeting August 12, 2024 and August 21, 2024 as presented.7. Action Items7.01 Approval - Facilities Update on Rental Fees - Dr. Stover8. Reports/Discussion Items8.01 Superintendent's Report - Dr. Stover9. Closed Session10. Open Session10.01 Personnel Report - Approval of Personnel Actions11. Adjournment11.01 Motion to adjourn###

More information, transcripts, bios, and resources available at adalive.org/episodes/episode-132. State and local governments provide many services, programs, and activities through websites and mobile applications (apps). When these are not accessible, they create barriers for people with disabilities to access government services and programs, like tax information, building permits, or garbage collection payments. Inaccessibility can also keep people with disabilities from joining or fully participating in civic or other community events like town meetings or programs at their child's school. In April 2024, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) published a final rule updating its regulations for Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This final rule has specific requirements for ensuring that web content and mobile apps are accessible to people with disabilities. The compliance date for this rule depends on the population size of the public entity. In this episode, we will share information and resources to learn more about the rule's requirements. Our guest is Ruben Mota, ADA Coordinator at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

What could possibly go wrong should a global systemically important banking organization fail? In this episode, we look how the FDIC would resolve such a ‘too big to fail' institution under Title II of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

This Day in Legal History: Federal Housing Act PassedOn this day in legal history, July 15, 1949, Congress passed the Federal Housing Act, a pivotal piece of legislation that aimed to address the nation's post-war housing crisis. This Act, also known as the Housing Act of 1949, was a key component of President Harry S. Truman's Fair Deal program. It marked a significant federal commitment to improving living conditions for low-income Americans. The Act provided federal funding for slum clearance, urban renewal projects, and the construction of low-rent public housing. Title I of the Act focused on urban renewal, authorizing the use of federal funds to clear blighted areas in cities. Title II aimed to increase the availability of low-rent public housing by providing subsidies for the construction of new units. The legislation intended not only to address the housing shortage but also to stimulate the economy by creating construction jobs.The passage of the Federal Housing Act of 1949 reflected a growing recognition of the government's role in ensuring decent housing for all citizens. However, its implementation also sparked controversy and criticism, particularly regarding the displacement of communities and the effectiveness of urban renewal efforts. Despite these challenges, the Act laid the groundwork for subsequent federal housing policies and programs, shaping the landscape of American cities and the lives of countless families. This landmark legislation underscored the ongoing struggle to balance development, equity, and community preservation in urban policy.A federal judge in Florida, Aileen Cannon, dismissed the criminal case against Donald Trump concerning his alleged illegal retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort. The ruling followed a hearing where Trump's legal team argued for dismissal, citing selective prosecution and political targeting by Democrats as Trump seeks the presidency again. They also referenced a Supreme Court decision granting the president immunity for official acts. In contrast, President Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence faced no criminal charges for their mishandling of classified documents, as both cooperated with investigators. Prosecutors had argued Trump's case was different due to allegations he obstructed the investigation by moving documents and discussing deceit with investigators. The dismissed charges had included 40 counts related to national security issues like nuclear capabilities and military vulnerabilities.Florida judge dismisses criminal classified documents case against TrumpFollowing the Supreme Court's decision to limit federal regulators' powers, the Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration Association and two show horse owners filed a lawsuit against a new USDA rule aimed at preventing horse soring. The case was strategically filed in Amarillo, Texas, to be heard by US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, known for rulings against Biden administration policies. Plaintiffs argue the USDA rule, which bans devices and practices that can mask evidence of soring, will significantly devalue their horses, leading to a regulatory taking. The rule specifically targets Tennessee Walking Horses and Racking Horses, prohibiting chains, pads, wedges, and lubricants used to enhance their gait.The lawsuit comes in the wake of the Supreme Court's June 28 decision to end Chevron deference, which had required courts to defer to an agency's reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous law. This case exemplifies the swift actions taken by anti-regulation groups to leverage the new regulatory landscape. Despite not explicitly mentioning Chevron or Loper Bright, the lawsuit challenges the USDA's authority under the Horse Protection Act, claiming the banned equipment does not cause soring based on scientific evidence.Legal experts note the potential implications of this case, suggesting it could influence future regulatory policymaking. Critics argue the association is engaging in judge shopping to secure a favorable outcome. The plaintiffs seek to invalidate the rule and claim compensation for the anticipated loss in their horses' value, arguing the rule constitutes a regulatory taking. The outcome of this case could set a significant precedent in the context of administrative law and regulatory challenges.The concept of regulatory taking is central to this case. It refers to a situation where a government regulation limits the use of private property to such an extent that it effectively deprives the owners of its value, warranting compensation. This claim, if accepted by the court, could complicate future regulatory efforts by requiring compensation for loss in property value due to regulatory changes.Tennessee Horse Show Picks Texas to Challenge Rule Post ChevronA divided federal appeals court upheld Tennessee's longstanding policy prohibiting changes to the sex listed on birth certificates, rejecting a constitutional challenge by four transgender women. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that the U.S. Constitution does not mandate Tennessee to amend birth certificates to reflect gender identity. The court concluded that Tennessee has the discretion to maintain records based on biological sex. The plaintiffs argued that the policy violated their due process and equal protection rights under the 14th Amendment by discriminating based on sex and transgender status. However, Chief U.S. Circuit Judge Jeffrey Sutton, representing the majority, stated that there is no fundamental right to have a birth certificate reflect gender identity over biological sex. Tennessee's Republican attorney general, Jonathan Skrmetti, supported the ruling, emphasizing that any policy change must come from the state's residents.The plaintiffs' lawyer, Omar Gonzalez-Pagan from Lambda Legal, expressed disappointment and indicated potential further actions. He highlighted that the ruling conflicts with a recent decision by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which revived a similar lawsuit in Oklahoma. Judge Helene White, who dissented, argued that Tennessee's policy relies on outdated generalizations about sex and gender, infringing on the plaintiffs' rights by forcing them to disclose their transgender status in situations requiring birth certificates.Court upholds Tennessee ban on changing sex in birth certificates | ReutersOpenAI whistleblowers have filed a complaint with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), urging an investigation into the company's non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). These agreements allegedly required employees to waive their federal rights to whistleblower compensation. The whistleblowers, supported by Sen. Chuck Grassley's office, claim that OpenAI's policies suppress employees' rights to report concerns and receive compensation for protected disclosures. The complaint requests the SEC to impose fines on OpenAI for each improper NDA and to inspect all contracts containing such agreements. The whistleblowers also highlight that OpenAI's NDAs lacked exemptions for disclosing securities violations and required prior company consent to disclose information to federal regulators.Sen. Grassley emphasized the importance of whistleblower protections, especially as artificial intelligence continues to advance rapidly. The SEC has not commented on the existence of the whistleblower submission, and OpenAI has not responded to requests for comment. The complaint highlights concerns about OpenAI's restrictive practices amidst growing scrutiny over the safety and ethical deployment of AI technologies.OpenAI whistleblowers ask SEC to investigate alleged restrictive non-disclosure agreements | Reuters This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

Analysts Don Kellogg and Roger Entner discuss the landmark Chevron deference Supreme Court case and what it means for the future of telecom.00:23 Chevron deference overview 03:33 Politicization of the process04:18 Power shifts away from agencies 05:00 Relevance of the Telecom Act 06:19 Settled law is no longer settled 06:55 Predictions for the industryTags: telecom, telecommunications, wireless, prepaid, postpaid, cellular phone, Don Kellogg, Roger Entner, Supreme Court, Chevron deference, regulation, FCC, net neutrality, telecommunications Act of 1996, Title II

This week: Gigi Sohn on the end of the Affordable Connectivity Program and a new petition asking the FCC to reconsider its Title II forbearance decision and reopen the door to assessing broadband revenues for the USF. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Berin Szóka (TechFreedom) and James Dunstan (TechFreedom) discuss the FCC's recent orders on Title II common-carrier regulation and digital discrimination.Topics include:A hundred years of telecom law in four minutesThe craziest story in the history of federal regulationFCC: Huzzah for crappy Internet (like in Europe)!SCOTUS: Congress must tackle major questions!Disparate treatment vs. disparate impactThe FCC crams an elephant in a mouseholeLinks:Zombie FCC vs. Schoolhouse-Rock Supreme CourtFCC Revives Common Carriage for the InternetTechFreedom's brief in the digital discrimination litigationTechFreedom's comments in the FCC's Title II proceedingNet Neutrality Legislation: A Framework for Consensus

Net Neutrality Insights: Consequences & Predictions with Dan McVaugh   In this episode of 5G Guys, Dan McVaugh revisits the topic of net neutrality. Dan shares personal stories from his telecom career, highlighting potential unintended consequences if the FCC reinstates net neutrality by classifying telecom providers under Title II of the Communications Act. He explores the impacts on network performance, advanced 5G features, and critical services like FirstNet for first responders, ending with cautious predictions on the future judicial outcomes and their implications.     __________________________ Link to Episode 63 with Nathan Leamer __________________________      Nathan Leamer on 5G Guys Podcast ➡︎ https://5gguys.com/podcast/63-net-neutrality-with-nathan-leamer/   __________________________ Connect With Our Sponsor __________________________      Vertex Innovations ➡︎ https://vertex-us.com/   __________________________ Connect With Us __________________________      5G Guys Website ➡︎  https://5gguys.com        Social:        ·       Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/5Gguys      ·       LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12515882      ·       X: https://twitter.com/5gGuys   _______________________________ Submit Your Ideas or Feedback ➡︎ https://5gguys.com/contact-2 _______________________________ Subscribe to the 5G Guys Weekly Newsletter ➡︎ https://mailchi.mp/5gguys/subscribe-to-the-5g-guys _______________________________ ⏰Episode Minute-by-Minute⏰ 00:00 Introduction to Net Neutrality Discussion 00:46 Understanding Net Neutrality 01:34 Real-World Experiences and Stories 04:59 Potential Consequences of Net Neutrality 06:13 Current Status and Predictions 07:59 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Dan and Monica announce our newly-elected RAILS Board members, what libraries need to know in order to be in compliance with Title II, and how you might be interested in exploring our growing interlibrary loan platform, Find More Illinois. Relevant Links: 2024 RAILS Board candidate videos Digital Accessibility Pulse Page 6/6/24 RAILS Member Update recording Find More Illinois

On this episode of Full Spectrum, we discuss the FCC's decision at its May 2024 Open Meeting to reclassify broadband Internet access service (“BIAS”) from a lightly regulated information service to a telecommunications service regulated under Title II of the Communications Act, as well as adopt bright line net neutrality rules for BIAS providers. During the episode, you'll hear from partners Tom Cohen, Chip Yorkgitis, and Hank Kelly, special counsel Mike Dover, and senior associates Jenny Wainwright and Winafred Brantl.

On this episode of the ACB Advocacy Update, Claire and Swatha go through the recently released rule from the Department of Justice on accessibility of websites and mobile apps under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act with guests from the American Foundation for the Blind Public Policy and Research Department, Stephanie Enyart and Sarah Malaier. We go over what is in the rule and who it covers, why this rule was necessary at all, and the organized response from the disability community during the rule's development. Learn more about the rule from the DOJ at Fact Sheet: New Rule on the Accessibility of Web Content and Mobile Apps Provided by State and Local Governments | ADA.gov Read an AFB blog post on this rule at Final Rule on Website Accessibility Will Mean Greater Access to State and Local Governments | American Foundation for the Blind (afb.org)

On this special edition of the AccessWorld podcast, we welcome AFB's Chief Public Policy & Research Officer Stephanie Enyart and Senior Advisor for Public Policy & Research Sarah Malaier. Together, our hosts Tony and Aaron discuss with our guests the U.S. Department of Justice's recently published final rule on website and mobile app accessibility for state and local governments. This rule is the culmination of decades of advocacy and rulemaking and marks a significant step in ensuring that the digital world is fully accessible to people who are blind, have low vision, or are deafblind. Learn more about the final rule on the AFB Blog: https://afb.org/blog/entry/final-rule-website-accessibility. AccessWorld is a podcast and online magazine on digital inclusion and accessibility produced by the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB). The podcast drops at the start of each month, and the online magazine is published quarterly. To learn more about AccessWorld, visit www.afb.org/AW. Aaron Preece is the editor-in-chief of AccessWorld, and Tony Stephens is the Assistant Vice President for Communications at AFB. Be sure to like and subscribe to the podcast, and you can also support our work by making a tax deductible  donation at www.afb.orgdonate. For past episodes and transcripts, visit the AFB AccessWorld Podcast page.

Hey Strangers, #netneutrality #tech #fcc This week the FCC voted to bring back net neutrality. This move brings back rules that ended in 2017. The rules, first introduced in 2015, designated Internet service providers as Title II companies, which are akin to gas and electric companies, with heavier oversight. They made it through a legal challenge in court before the following administration ordered their dismantling ======================================= My other podcast https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKpvBEElSl1dD72Y5gtepkw article links: https://cordcuttersnews.com/net-neutrality-is-back-what-does-that-mean-for-cord-cutting/ https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/29/tech/fcc-fines-att-verizon-200-million/index.html ====================================== Today is for push-ups and Programming and I am all done doing push-ups Discord https://discord.gg/MYvNgYYFxq TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@strangestcoder Youtube https://www.youtube.com/@codingwithstrangers Twitch https://www.twitch.tv/CodingWithStrangers Twitter https://twitter.com/strangestcoder merch Support CodingWithStrangers IRL by purchasing some merch. All merch purchases include an alert: https://streamlabs.com/codingwithstrangers/merch Github Follow my works of chaos https://github.com/codingwithstrangers Tips https://streamlabs.com/codingwithstrangers/tip Patreon patreon.com/TheStrangers Timeline 00:00 intro 00:12 What are we talking about 1:05 Article 8:06 thoughts 10:10 outro anything else? Take Care --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/coding-with-strangers/message

Former athletic director Dazhon Darien arrested for using AI voice synthesis to impersonate Principal Eric Eiswert, sparking racism controversy at Pikesville High School. Police investigation and response discussed. Technology behind AI misuse and broader concerns for cybersecurity professionals explored. [Original article: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/04/alleged-ai-voice-imitation-leads-to-arrest-in-baltimore-school-racism-controversy/] FCC restores net neutrality, reclassifying broadband service as Title II telecommunications for consumer protection and national security. Decision prohibits blocking, throttling, or paid prioritization of lawful content. Enhanced FCC authority to monitor service outages and regulate foreign-owned broadband entities addressed. [Original article: https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2024/04/25/net-neutrality-restored/] Researchers at Sekoia sinkhole PlugX malware server, intercepting 2.5 million unique IP connections in six months. Global impact, infection analysis, disinfection challenges, and historical context of PlugX malware outlined. Ongoing threat and control complexities discussed. [Original article: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/researchers-sinkhole-plugx-malware-server-with-25-million-unique-ips/] Tags: AI voice synthesis, controversy, manipulations, Dazhon Darien, racism, antisemitism, arrest, net neutrality, FCC, broadband service, Title II telecommunications service, internet access, regulations, PlugX malware, sinkholing, command and control server, IP addresses, computer security Search phrases: 1. Dazhon Darien AI voice synthesis controversy 2. FCC broadband service reclassification impact 3. Net neutrality and FCC decision 4. PlugX malware sinkholing research 5. IP addresses capture by sinkholing 6. Cleaning computers infected with PlugX malware 7. Protecting devices from PlugX worm 8. AI voice synthesis manipulation prevention 9. Dazhon Darien arrest and implications 10. Internet regulations in the United States  APR26 The former athletic director of Pikesville High School in Baltimore used AI voice synthesis to frame the school's principal using racist and anti semitic comments, which led to uproar in the community, and the principal had to take a leave of absence. What technology did this former athletic director use, and what's going to happen to him? Net neutrality has been restored as the FCC votes to reclassify broadband service in order to protect consumers and ensure a fast, open, fair and reliable Internet. How will this decision impact Internet regulations and access across the United States and the world? Security researchers were able to take control of a variant of the PlugX By sinkholing one of its command and control servers that saw over 2. 5 million unique IP addresses in just the last 6 months. What strategies are these security researchers proposing in order to get rid of this malware from end devices? You're listening to The Daily Decrypt. Researchers at Sequoia have successfully sinkholed a command and control server for a variant of the PlugX malware, intercepting over 2. 5 million connections from unique IP addresses in the last six months. These security researchers at Sequoia were able to access the actual command and control server through a web shell, which allowed them to not only shut it down, but to continue receiving the requests from the infected hosts, and they've shown over 90, 000 daily requests across 170 countries. Now, some of those requests were through VPNs, and so the country might not be accurate. But it's very interesting for them to be able to observe the malware's behavior as if it was still under control of this server. Sequoia acquired control of this IP by working closely with the internet service provider who provides this IP and They just paid seven bucks to transfer ownership to them And again, VPNs make it hard, but they're assuming this has something to do with China, as the top infected countries are related to China's Belt and Road Initiative. But this malware has had over four years to spread to wherever it can, so this conclusion should be taken with a grain of salt. But now that researchers have control over the Command and Control server They're faced with this legal dilemma of how are they going to rid the end devices from this malware. First of all, it's illegal to interact with devices that you don't own. So, crafting some sort of packet to send back to this malware to self delete would be crossing some legal boundaries. Also, this PlugX malware is trained to replicate and spread on its own automatically, so even if they were able to rid the device of this malware, it's likely going to spread or be spread to again. But as of now, the researchers are working on Some procedures for end users to rid their devices of this malware and maybe harden their security. I'm not sure how they're going to disseminate this information, but we'll probably reach out to the internet service providers to push a message to the owners of those IP addresses. But either way, this is pretty cool, especially from a security research perspective. So be sure to check out the show notes for the article that has a ton of more information on their findings when observing the malware's behavior. Alright, you know I'm a sucker for a good AI story. Well, a former athletic director at a Pikesville high school in Baltimore used AI voice synthesis To put racist and anti semitic words into his principal's mouth. Now, I don't know what kind of beef this guy had with his principal, but that'll do it. That'll take care of it. Now before I move on, this former athletic director is, has been arrested by the Baltimore police and accused of using AI voice synthesis to clone his principal's voice, but the clip likely used technologies like 11 labs which do a very good job of cloning voices. The clip in question was posted to a popular Instagram account and I won't repeat the comments from the clip But you can check out the link by Ars Technica in the show notes to read what it said. You won't be surprised It's very racist and anti semitic But I can only imagine being a parent of a kid or someone on the PTO board or something like that Hearing these out of the principal's voice. They instantly believed it. They believed it to be true according to this article, and why wouldn't they? We're still in this day and age where we all know AI voice synthesis is a thing, yet we haven't trained our brains to question everything we hear. That's a big ask of your brain. So the principal was completely embarrassed and took some time off and denies making these comments, but what can you do? And it's kind of like watching a villain on a movie. If you see that person who plays the villain in real life, you're gonna have a gut reaction because you hated seeing them so much on the silver screen, right? So, his voice is already out there saying these things and people for a while, while there was an investigation, started to hate this man, started to have feelings about him. And so now that it's proven that he didn't say that, those feelings are still going to linger. So this is a very damaging thing, and it's only going to get worse. So we, as consumers of media, have to be vigilant about not believing everything we hear. Especially if there's no video attached, or if the video looks weird. We just can't be trusting everything we see or hear. And finally, the FCC has voted to restore net neutrality, reclassifying broadband service as a Title II telecommunications service to ensure a fast, open, and fair internet. This allows the FCC to protect the open internet by preventing internet service providers or other service providers on the internet from throttling. or blocking legal content. They also can't pay for prioritization of internet. It has to be free and fair for all. Now, I'm sure there are some caveats that not everyone will agree with, but this is good, and this restores the rules that were upheld by the DC Circuit in 2016. The Commission will also have the ability to revoke the authorizations of foreign owned entities. who pose a threat to national security to operate broadband networks in the United States, which is an authority the Commission has previously executed by revoking the operating authorities of four Chinese state owned carriers to provide voice services in the United States. The FCC is also allowed to get involved in internet outages. Now, If students can't go to school or remote workers can't go to work, the FCC can get involved and help restore those internet services. So TLDR, they're essentially treating internet like the critical infrastructure that it is. This has been the Daily Decrypt. If you found your key to unlocking the digital domain, show your support with a rating on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. It truly helps us stand at the frontier of cyber news. Don't forget to connect on Instagram or catch our episodes on YouTube. Until next time, keep your data safe and your curiosity alive.

Analysts Don Kellogg and Roger Entner dive deep into the prospect of net neutrality's return.00:25 Roger says net neutrality is déjà vu all over again 02:00 Network slicing 02:59 Who really benefits from net neutrality? 04:04 Title II and political predictions 07:49 Net neutrality as a gateway to price controls 10:12 Net promoter scores are up without net neutrality 11:24 Discussion conclusionsTags: telecom, telecommunications, wireless, prepaid, postpaid, cellular phone, DonKellogg, Roger Entner, net neutrality, FCC, network slicing, Title II, Supreme Court, election, price controls, ACP, net promoter scores, NPS

This week is a journal episode. This episode was inspired by the recent Hill Briefing that was organized by the Repeal CAPTA Coalition. What came across so clearly in the briefing is that we don't have to wait for justice, we can act now to advance justice. Part of the proposal of the Repeal CAPTA Coalition is to shift funds from Title I of CAPTA to Title II and increase that amount to $500 million annually. This would put more money into community-based programs that are meeting the economic and concrete support needs of families. When so much of the federal funding requires families to be separated this proposal to invest in the well-being and integrity of families is a practical way to advance justice. To learn more about the Repeal CAPTA Coalition you can visit their website.  Repeal CAPTAYou are invited to join the Proximity Podcast Club, a growing community of people who are supporting one another through their own process of becoming who they want to be in this work. We meet every Monday morning at 9am est. Message me, Matt Anderson, on LinkedIn for the meeting link.Please connect with me, Matt Anderson, on LinkedIn - Matt Anderson | LinkedIn

In this episode of The Consumer Finance Podcast, host, Chris Willis, is joined by Partners Kim Phan and Lori Sommerfield, to discuss recent developments related to website accessibility under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). In this episode, they explore the Department of Justice's proposed rule under Title II of the ADA, which seeks to improve state and local government website and mobile app access for individuals with disabilities, and the potential significance to the private sector. They also discuss the international World Wide Web Consortium's latest version of its Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), 2.2, and the first working draft of WCAG 3.0. Tune in to learn more about these important updates and how they may impact your organization.

This week on the podcast, Christopher explores the broadband and telecommunications landscape with Blair Levin, anticipating its significance in 2024. They delve into crucial FCC issues, including the ACP and the future of Title II, while also addressing industry mergers, the evolution of fixed wireless and fiber networks, and ongoing challenges in achieving universal service and closing the digital divide. ★ Support this podcast ★

This episode of Washington Update examines significant changes and updates in higher education policy, with a focus on the Higher Education Act of 2019, the FAFSA Simplification Act, and various Title regulations. The discussion highlights the Biden-Harris administration's active role in Negotiated Rulemaking since late 2020, bringing about a comprehensive set of regulations affecting higher education. Washington Updates Discussed: Higher Education Act 2019 Changes: Emphasis on the need for a comprehensive review of the act, touching on Title II (teacher education), Title IV (federal student financial aid), and Title IX (campus security). Negotiated Rulemaking Under Biden-Harris Administration: Overview of the regulatory revisions, including a new oversight set for all higher education institutions, termed as financial value transparency, an extension of the gainful employment regulations. Future Implementation: Discussion on the timeline for the implementation of these regulations, with the complete effect expected by July 1, 2024, and subsequent assessments in 2025 and 2026. Major Regulation Changes: Insight into the recent large set of regulations impacting financial responsibility, administrative capability certification procedures, and ability to benefit regulations. Title IX Updates: Exploration of changes brought about by Title IX, awaiting major revisions related to campus security, including LBGTQ+ communities, and protection against bullying and cyberbullying. Impending FAFSA Updates: Discussion on the forthcoming 2024-2025 FAFSA, reflecting changes from the FAFSA simplification law of 2019, to be released by December 31st. Three Takeaways for Higher Education Leaders: Cybersecurity: Emphasis on compliance with FTC safeguard rules and upcoming changes from the Department of Education. Regulatory Change Impact: Urging financial aid departments to understand the implications of recent proposals, especially on financial responsibility and administrative capability. Borrower Defense to Repayment: Encouraging institutions to review claims thoroughly to understand their substance.   Final Thoughts:  The episode provides a comprehensive analysis of the evolving landscape in higher education policy, highlighting the need for higher education leaders to stay informed and proactive in adapting to these changes.   Read the transcript →   About Our Guest Tom Netting TEN Government Strategies CEO Tom Netting, a regular guest on the Changing Higher Ed® podcast, provides updates on the latest coming out of Washington, D.C., and how these will impact institutions and students. Having spent all of his professional career devoted to higher education policy oversight and implementation, Tom Netting has an extensive knowledge of the laws and regulations governing all aspects of higher education. His considerable background and experience have afforded him the opportunity to view the development and implementation of federal higher education and workforce development policy in their entirety – including issues related to higher education and workforce development, health care, veteran affairs policies, and the procurement of federal appropriations.   Tom Netting on LinkedIn →   About the Host Dr. Drumm McNaughton, host of Changing Higher Ed® podcast, is a consultant to higher education institutions with a focus on governance, accreditation, strategy, change, and mergers. To learn more about his services and other thought leadership pieces, visit his firm's website: https://changinghighered.com/.   The Change Leader's Social Media Links LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drdrumm/ Twitter: @thechangeldr Email: podcast@changinghighered.com   #NegotiatedRulemaking #NegReg #HigherEdPolilcy

What is up with RFK JR flip flopping on free speech. Why are Right Wing candidates pushing for ID2020. ID2020 is a public-private consortium that advocates for digital ID for the billion undocumented people worldwide and under-served groups like refugees. ID2020 uses vaccination as a platform for digital identity, and aims to provide individuals with control over their own digital identities, including how personal data is collected, used, and shared. The FCC Equity Act is a proposed set of rules that the FCC is expected to adopt based on a one-page section of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which calls on the FCC to adopt rules that would ensure that all Americans have access to affordable, reliable, and high-quality broadband services, taking into account technical and economic feasibility, and preventing and eliminating digital discrimination based on income, race, ethnicity, color, religion, or national origin. The FCC Equity Act would classify broadband as a Title II telecommunications service, which means that it would be subject to some common-carrier regulations, such as nondiscrimination, privacy, and consumer protection . This would also restore the net neutrality rules that were adopted during the Obama administration and repealed during the Trump administration, which prohibit internet service providers (ISPs) from blocking, throttling, or favoring certain online content or applications . The issue of losing free speech with these initiatives is that they will enable the government and corporations to monitor, censor, and manipulate online content and communication, and to collect and exploit personal data of individuals, based on their identity attributes or political views . These initiatives will also coerce or pressure individuals to accept digital ID and vaccination, and to comply with certain rules or behaviors, in order to access essential services or benefits, such as education, health care, travel, or social security . These initiatives could also create a centralized and standardized system of digital identity that could be used to exclude, discriminate, or oppress individuals based on their identity attributes, such as nationality, ethnicity, religion, gender, or health status. FCC Equity Act ID2020 SAFE Act digital identity free speech internet regulation net neutrality privacy surveillance censorship ai takedown, communism in the usa FCC Equity Act: FCC, broadband, Title II, net neutrality, digital discrimination, internet regulation, infrastructure, consumer protection, privacy, Obama, Trump. ID2020: ID2020, digital ID, vaccination, biometrics, blockchain, refugees, undocumented, human rights, data sovereignty, global health, GAVI, Microsoft, Rockefeller Foundation, UN. Losing free speech: free speech, censorship, surveillance, manipulation, coercion, privacy, data exploitation, identity attributes, political views, exclusion, oppression, social credit, Orwellian, dystopian.

On this episode of Full Spectrum partners Tom Cohen and Chip Yorkgitis discuss the Notice of Proposed Rule Making adopted by the Commission at its October 19 Open Meeting in its newly-commenced Open Internet (or Net Neutrality) proceeding proposing to reclassify broadband Internet access service (“BIAS”) from a lightly regulated information service to a telecommunications service regulated under Title II of the Communications Act (01:19). The Commission's Notice proposes to adopt Open Internet rules that are very similar to those previously imposed in 2015 and largely rescinded in 2017. Additionally, Chip discusses a Second Report and Order adopted at the Open Meeting (but only released on November 1) that expands unlicensed use in the 6 GHz Band in the face of opposition from licensed incumbents by permitting very low power devices to operate in two sub-bands both indoors and outdoors, and both fixed and mobile (15:30). He also explains that the Commission continues to consider other proposals to expand unlicensed power and flexibility – both from a 2020 Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and a Second Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that accompanies the Second Report and Order. Finally, Tom and Chip give a brief preview of the Digital Discrimination item that is on the Commission's tentative agenda for its November 15 Open Meeting (35:25).

Cobun Zweifel-Keegan from International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) sits down to talk about the children's privacy landscape in the US and beyond. Ben's story discusses whether AI giants may soon have to worry about defamation lawsuits. Dave's got the story on FCC's renewed interest in net neutrality. While this show covers legal topics, and Ben is a lawyer, the views expressed do not constitute legal advice. For official legal advice on any of the topics we cover, please contact your attorney.  Links to stories: Will ChatGPT's hallucinations be allowed to ruin your life? FCC moves ahead with Title II net neutrality rules in 3-2 party-line vote Caveat Briefing A companion weekly newsletter is available CyberWire Pro members on the CyberWire's website. If you are a member, make sure you subscribe to receive our weekly wrap-up of privacy, policy, and research news, focused on incidents, techniques, tips, compliance, rights, trends, threats, policy, and influence ops delivered to you inbox each Thursday. Got a question you'd like us to answer on our show? You can send your audio file to caveat@thecyberwire.com. Hope to hear from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Josh Stager, policy director at Free Press, joins the podcast to discuss the FCC's move to restore Title II rules for broadband providers, and to debunk some of the industry's arguments opposing the proceeding. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

THE TIM JONES AND CHRIS ARPS SHOW  0:00 SEG 1 Moderates Could Get Primaried if They Lose Their Base Today's Speaker's Stump Speech is brought to you by https://www.hansenstree.com/  and is about Israeli and US intelligence failures leading to the Hamas attacks 19:04 SEG 2 Jake Morabito, Director of the Communications and Technology Task Force at the American Legislative Exchange Council, talks about how on Thursday, October 19, the FCC will take the first step toward reenacting the harmful net neutrality regulations reclassifying internet as a Title II common carrier https://alec.org/person/jake-morabito/  29:20 SEG 3 Dems are Waving their “I Hate Israel” Flags High | New evidence in the Alec Baldwin 'Rust' set shooting | Taylor Swift is setting records     https://newstalkstl.com/    FOLLOW TIM - https://twitter.com/SpeakerTimJones    FOLLOW CHRIS - https://twitter.com/chris_arps    24/7 LIVESTREAM - http://bit.ly/newstalkstlstream    RUMBLE - https://rumble.com/NewsTalkSTL   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Travis King, the American soldier who crossed into North Korea two months ago, is back on U.S. soil. The Federal Communications Commission plans to reinstate net neutrality protections that were nixed in 2018 during the Trump administration. The proposal aims to reclassify both fixed and mobile broadband as an essential communications service under Title II of the Communications Act, akin to water, power and phone services.  Thursday - 9/28/2023 - Hour 3See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

TRAI has released a consultation paper discussing the potential regulation of OTT platforms, reigniting discussions on net neutrality. The key questions raised: Should communication and entertainment platforms compensate for network usage? And should they be regulated in the same way as telecom service providers? Should selective banning of apps be allowed instead of blanket internet bans? Join Sridhar Krishna as he discusses these topics with Rijesh Panicker and Bharath Reddy. Reading: Takshashila Policy Advisory - Regulatory Mechanism for Over-The-Top (OTT) Communication Services and Selective Banning of OTT Services Do check out Takshashila's public policy courses: https://school.takshashila.org.in/courses We are @‌IVMPodcasts on Facebook, Twitter, & Instagram. https://twitter.com/IVMPodcasts https://www.instagram.com/ivmpodcasts/?hl=en https://www.facebook.com/ivmpodcasts/ You can check out our website at https://shows.ivmpodcasts.com/featured Follow the show across platforms: Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, JioSaavn, Gaana, Amazon Music Do share the word with your folks!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Google announced plans to end several services including YouTube Premium Lite, Basic HTML Gmail, and Google Podcasts. US FCC unveiled a proposal to reclassify broadband internet providers as telecommunications providers, aka Title II. And LG takes the wraps of its latest foldable-screen laptop.Pixel Support Until the 7 Year Itch - GDI 4612 starts at 31:46What was the lowest grade you were comfortable getting when you were in school? Did you ever get an “I”? School talk takes over. How many pass/fail classes have you taken? How many years should a phone get OS updates? When do you feel your tech is getting slow enough to replace it? Where is your plateau of use? Do you still have rotary phones laying around? The group walked down a corded phone memory lane. Do you remember when your family got a cordless phone? When was the last time you used a payphone? Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang, Joe.Link to the Show Notes. Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/dtns. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Google announced plans to end several services including YouTube Premium Lite, Basic HTML Gmail, and Google Podcasts. US FCC unveiled a proposal to reclassify broadband internet providers as telecommunications providers, aka Title II. And LG takes the wraps of its latest foldable-screen laptop. Pixel Support Until the 7 Year Itch – GDI 4612 starts at 31:46 What was the lowest grade you were comfortable getting when you were in school? Did you ever get an “I”? School talk takes over. How many pass/fail classes have you taken? How many years should a phone get OS updates? When do you feel your tech is getting slow enough to replace it? Where is your plateau of use? Do you still have rotary phones laying around? The group walked down a corded phone memory lane. Do you remember when your family got a cordless phone? When was the last time you used a payphone? Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang, Joe To read the show notes in a separate page click here! Support the show on Patreon by becoming a supporter!

The reclassification of broadband under Title II is one of the divisive FCC regulatory policy matters of the last decade. It was authorized under the leadership of former Chairman Tom Wheeler, and later erased by ex-Chairman Ajit Pai.On Tuesday, empowered with an all-important third Democratic vote, Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel revealed that she's introducing a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that is being circulated among the Commissioners for consideration. This would open up for public input whether or not "net neutrality" is something the Commission should bring back.Rosenworcel formally announced the NPRM at a National Press Club event. This InFOCUS Podcast, presented by dot.FM, offers comments directly from Rosenworcel on the plan to make "net neutrality" happen once again.

20230916 Demand Our Access Originally Broadcasted September 16, 2023, on ACB Media 5   I demoted commenting on the proposed rule for web accessibility under Title II.   Sponsored by Jonathan Simeone   Find out more at https://acb-community.pinecast.co

Web: www.JonesHealthLaw.com Phone: (305)877-5054 Instagram: @JonesHealthLaw Facebook: @JonesHealthLaw Youtube: @JonesHealthLaw The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a comprehensive civil rights law in the United States that prohibits discrimination based on disability in everyday activities, including medical services. The ADA applies to healthcare providers and has implications for how they must treat individuals with disabilities to ensure equal access to medical services.    Title II of the ADA applies to public hospitals, clinics, and health care services operated by state and local governments. Title III of the ADA applies to privately-owned and operated hospitals, clinics, and health care providers. Under Title III of the ADA, businesses that provide services to the public are called public accommodations. Public accommodations are private entities such as a doctor's office, a dentist's office, a psychologist's office, a clinic, a hospital, a group practice, urgent care, a general physician, a physical rehabilitation facility, or other healthcare professionals.    All public accommodations must comply with basic nondiscrimination requirements prohibiting exclusion, segregation, and unequal treatment. Furthermore, the ADA requires healthcare providers to make reasonable accommodations to ensure that individuals with disabilities have equal access to medical care and health facilities. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/joneshealthlaw/support

20230819 Demand Our Access Originally Broadcasted August 19, 2023, on ACB Media 5   We discussed the proposed rule on web accessibility under Title II of the ADA.   Sponsored by Jonathan Simeone   Find out more at https://acb-community.pinecast.co

On this day in legal history, August 14, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act. The act created unemployment insurance, pension plans for the elderly and what would become “Aid to Families with Dependent Children” (AFDC). In the midst of the Great Depression, the Social Security Act was conceived to provide economic security for the aged. Early in January 1935, the Committee on Economic Security (CES) submitted a report to President Roosevelt, and congressional hearings followed in the House Ways & Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee. While some provisions faced close votes in committees, the bill passed overwhelmingly in both houses, and after a conference lasting throughout July, it was sent to President Roosevelt for his signature. Signed into law on August 14, 1935, the act included provisions for general welfare and created a social insurance program to pay a continuing income to retired workers 65 or older.The significance of the Social Security Act lay in its long-term approach to economic security through a contributory system, where workers contributed to their own future retirement benefits. Notably, two major provisions relating to the elderly were Title I, supporting state welfare programs for the aged, and Title II, the new social insurance program known as Social Security. Originally, benefits were to be paid to primary workers at age 65, based on their payroll tax contributions during their working life, with collections starting in 1937 and monthly benefits in 1942 (later advanced to 1940 under amendments). President Roosevelt envisioned this act as a moderate alternative to more radical solutions of the time, establishing a foundation for the protection of average citizens against job loss and poverty in old age.Nearly 70 Indian nationals, who were employed in the U.S. through a training program for foreign graduates, are suing the U.S. government for denial of their H-1B visas, citing employer fraud. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) denied the visas due to the workers' association with businesses that perpetrated fraud, without allowing the plaintiffs to respond. The workers are now requesting the court to overturn the DHS's decision on their visa applications, arguing that they should be allowed to respond to fraud allegations. The lawsuit also claims that the agency violated the Administrative Procedure Act by exceeding its authority and deeming the plaintiffs as inadmissible without full evidence. The plaintiffs were associated with four IT staffing companies, later discovered by DHS to have engaged in a fraudulent scheme. Plaintiff Siddhartha Kalavala Venkata's case highlights the personal impact, as his H-1B visa was denied, forcing him to leave the U.S. The lawsuit argues that the Immigration and Nationality Act requires DHS to provide notice of actions like visa sanctions, and the opportunity to submit evidence in response.Indian Grads Sue Over H-1B Denials Based on Employers' FraudA National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) judge has ruled that Starbucks Corp.'s civility rule in its employee handbook violated federal labor law as it could be perceived as discouraging union activity. Administrative Law Judge Michael Rosas ordered Starbucks to rescind its "How We Communicate" policy and notify U.S. workers of its illegality via text message, social media postings, and other electronic means. This marks the 22nd time that an administrative law judge has ruled that Starbucks violated federal labor law related to union organizing efforts; one decision dismissed all allegations. Judge Rosas also found Starbucks guilty of other unfair labor practices in Philadelphia stores, including illegally firing and threatening workers for union activity. The judge's ruling on the civility rule is notable for its application of a new NLRB precedent. Starbucks must take specific actions to rescind the rule and can appeal the decision to the NLRB. A company spokesperson said Starbucks disagrees with the ruling and is exploring further legal options.Starbucks' Civility Rule Violates Labor Law, NLRB Judge Says (1)Lawyers from various firms are investigating the deadly Maui fires, focusing on the utility power lines as a potential source of ignition. Evidence is being collected that points to Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc.'s damaged power infrastructure as the cause of the spark that led to the flames. Hawaiian Electric has come under scrutiny for not turning off power despite warnings of critical fire conditions, and a major grid fault was detected just before the fire started. Plaintiff law firms have filed a class-action lawsuit against Hawaiian Electric on behalf of thousands affected by the fire. Legal experts note that if power lines are linked to the fire, Hawaiian Electric will need to be shown to have been negligent or that it could have reasonably prevented the loss. The situation has already impacted Hawaiian Electric's stock, which has tumbled due to investor concerns over the company's potential role in the blazes. Legal liability could be significant, with damages from the blaze estimated at approximately $5.5 billion.In Search for Hawaii Fires Cause, Lawyers Probe Power Lines (2)McDonald's Corp. has quietly removed the abbreviation "ESG" (Environmental, Social, and Governance) from some parts of its website. The change comes during a time when ESG initiatives are facing criticism from some conservative policymakers in the US. According to Bloomberg News, one web page previously titled “ESG Approach & Progress” is now labeled “Our Approach & Progress,” and other similar changes have been made. McDonald's has substituted the phrase “environmental and social issues” for the ESG abbreviation in some instances. The company declined to comment on the changes but reiterated its commitment to reporting annually on its progress on social and environmental goals. The move follows a backlash against ESG-related shareholder proposals, often criticized as "woke capitalism" by some conservatives.McDonald's Removes ESG Abbreviation From Parts of Its WebsiteSam Bankman-Fried, the former FTX Chief Executive who faces fraud charges over the bankruptcy of the cryptocurrency exchange, has been ordered to prepare for his trial from Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC). U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that Bankman-Fried must be jailed for witness tampering while on a $250 million bond. MDC is notorious for poor conditions, with reports of staffing shortages, power outages, maggots in food, and other inhumane situations. In 2019, an electrical fire cut off the jail's heat and lighting for days, and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell's lawyers once likened her conditions there to those of Hannibal Lecter in "The Silence of the Lambs." Bankman-Fried's lawyers had argued against jailing him at MDC, citing concerns that a "staffing crisis" would hinder his access to evidence. The jail, founded in 1994, currently hosts 1,608 inmates and became the main facility housing detainees awaiting federal trials in New York City after the Manhattan Correctional Center closed in 2021. Other high-profile inmates at MDC include the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez, and exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui, both of whom have pleaded not guilty to their respective charges.Bankman-Fried heads to Brooklyn jail notorious for poor conditions | Reuters Get full access to Minimum Competence - Daily Legal News Podcast at www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

The idea behind net neutrality is pretty simple -- fair access to legal content for all consumers regardless of what ISP they use. But how do you implement this idea? That's become the focus of a massive political battle in the United States that's been going on for two decades.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Somebody wrote on Twitter the other day that he was gonna give a talk on the use of evidence in drug policy, and Barrett Montgomery replied, “That'll be a short talk then!” So, let's talk about the IRA (Inflation Reduction Act) for a moment, specifically the “CMS can negotiate for drugs for Medicare patients” part of the IRA. There's one topic I don't hear discussed what I would consider maybe often enough. Will these negotiations result in pricing that is evidence based? Will good drugs that companies developed using less taxpayer money for R&D, drugs that positively impact the patient lives or have spillover benefits for society or save downstream medical costs, drugs that have solid comparative evidence data, drugs that are a meaningful therapeutic advancement over competitors ... will these drugs be priced in line with that value? Everything I just mentioned, by the way, are things that CMS is supposed to take into account during its negotiations. So, that's what this show is all about. To have this conversation, I invited Dr. Peter Neumann on the podcast because Dr. Neumann (along with his two coauthors, Joshua Cohen and Daniel Ollendorf) just wrote a book about pharmaceutical pricing entitled The Right Price. I convinced Dr. Neumann to come on the show and talk about what the likely impact the IRA will have on these right drug prices. And short version, Dr. Neumann told me that “presumably drugs that offer more therapeutic advances will do better under these negotiations.” Here's a really, really top-line summary of the negotiation provisions that are in the IRA: CMS will negotiate prices on the highest gross spend top 10 Part D drugs in 2026, 15 Part D drugs in 2027, and 15 drugs from Medicare Part B and D for 2028. Small molecule drugs become negotiation contenders after 9 years, and biologics after 13 years. Once a generic or biosimilar comes out (ie, the patent is well and truly expired), then this negotiation provision is no longer in play. Now, CMS is given some discretion over how it's going to do things, and they will issue guidance and figure out how to implement the law over the next couple of years. As with so many things (and Chris Deacon talked about this recently on LinkedIn), it's how that law is operationalized that actually determines if it achieves this “right price” goal and/or—and Dr. Neumann, my guest in this healthcare podcast, makes this point really clearly, too—maybe the point of the law is as much about cost containment, frankly, as it is about achieving value-based “right” prices. And cost containment and value-based pricing are not the same thing. I'm gonna do a show on this coming up. So, what are the likely effects of the IRA pharma price negotiation provisions? And not talking about the whole IRA here and the cadre of other stuff like patient out-of-pocket caps and inflation caps. This show is complicated enough just talking about the negotiation portion and just talking about its potential to achieve pricing based on “value.” Here's a summary of likely impact of Medicare drugs being negotiated, some of which we talk about in this episode. There's “seven-ish” main implications: 1. “Some Medicare patients will benefit substantially from negotiations …, as a reduction in the drug's price will result in lower coinsurance and liability during the deductible phase.” Okay … this makes sense. 2. “Overall, negotiations are projected by the CBO [Congressional Budget Office] to reduce premiums, resulting in lower costs for all Medicare beneficiaries.” References: CBO estimates drug savings for reconciliation. Committee for a responsible federal budget. Accessed April 11, 2023. https://www.crfb.org/blogs/cbo-estimates-drug-savings-reconciliation  Congressional Budget Office. Estimated budgetary effects of Public Law 117-169, to provide for reconciliation pursuant to Title II of S. Con. Res. 14. Published 2022. Accessed April 11, 2023. https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2022-09/PL117-169_9-7-22.pdf Okay … so, this #2 here is kind of thought provoking, especially when it's unclear at this time whether the negotiated price will refer to the list price, the AWP (average wholesale price), or the rebated price (ie, the price after rebates are applied). There are many, many implications if the negotiated price is before or after rebates, just given how “addicted” plans are to rebates and use the rebates, and cost shifting to patients, in a convoluted and super-inefficient way to try to keep premiums down. Listen to the show with Chris Sloan (EP216) for more on this. 3. There's more incentive to go after biologics than small molecule drugs—obvious, due to the 9-year versus 13-year thing. There's additionally some incentive for rare-disease and orphan drugs, most of which are biologics, in other parts of the IRA. 4. More interest in drugs for non-Medicare markets (ie, drugs for diseases of younger populations, perhaps) 5. Possibly less pharma innovation, fewer drug launches Oh, boy, with this one. Listen to the show with Mark Miller, PhD (EP380), for many, many nuances here. But let me give you a few things to think through, and I'd start with four words: We are chasing Goldilocks. There are two ends of the spectrum, and neither are good. On one end, Pharma charges way too much and the system gets bankrupted while pharma shareholders get rich. On the other side of the spectrum, there's not enough returns for any investors to invest in new drug development. It's all about moderation—finding the sweet spot in the middle—something the healthcare industry has a super hard time with. Bottom line, we want to incent meaningful innovation, drugs that actually work. If we pay a ton of money for drugs that don't work particularly well, then what's the incentive to find good drugs? As per my earlier point, if this legislation does as was intended, then good drugs should get rewarded and less comparatively effective drugs should be less rewarded. Let's cross our fingers, shall we? 6. Will Pharma raise its launch prices because the negotiations center on discounts? A higher price times the discount means a higher discounted price, after all. This one could be exacerbated by the part of the IRA that mandates inflation caps. There is some evidence that higher launch prices are already happening. 7. Manufacturers wait to launch until they have all their indications ready to go. If you didn't understand this, we explain in more detail during the interview. 8. There are incentives for Pharma to jack up commercial prices. Because they're making less money in Medicare, they try to make more money in the commercial market. But as Dr. Neumann says, you'd think that if Pharma could do that, they already would have done it. Or let me say that a different way: You'd think that if Pharma could have raised their commercial prices more than they already have been raising their commercial prices, they would have already done it. So, I think whether cost shifting actually increases here is a sizable question mark. 9. There's also less incentive for Pharma to innovate me-too kinds of drugs. If a drug in the same class for the same disease is being negotiated, then a new drug coming out in that same category might sort of have to charge a price similar to the negotiated price of the other drug. Dr. Peter Neumann, my guest in this episode, has a background in health economics and currently directs a research center that's focused on health economic issues. His group does a lot of work trying to understand the cost effectiveness of drugs and other health interventions. Other shows you should, for sure, listen to here are the ones with Mark Miller, PhD (EP380); Anna Kaltenboeck (EP303); Bruce Rector, MD (EP300); Scott Haas (EP365); and Chris Sloan (EP216). These shows offer context and adjacencies that are extremely relevant right now if you're gonna understand the potential impact of the IRA. Here's a quote from the book The Right Price (written by Dr. Peter Neumann and his coauthors, Joshua Cohen and Daniel Ollendorf) that I thought summed up some of the issues here very nicely: If there existed a Rorschach test for drug prices, it might conjure one of two images. Some people might perceive prices as a compass directing companies to invest in products that people value most. Aligning prices with value is akin to a “true north” orientation of the compass's arrow. Failure to link prices with value sends misleading signals to drug producers. Others might regard drug prices as a wall preventing patients from accessing the drugs they need. For them, the barrier should be as low as possible. But aligning prices with value might have little effect in lowering the wall. How then to accomplish that goal?   You can learn more at cevr.tuftsmedicalcenter.org or by reading The Right Price.   Peter J. Neumann, ScD, is director of the Center for the Evaluation of Value and Risk in Health (CEVR) at the Institute for Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies at Tufts Medical Center and professor of medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine. He is the founder and director of the Cost-Effectiveness Analysis Registry, a comprehensive database of cost-effectiveness analyses in healthcare. Dr. Neumann has written widely on the role of clinical and economic evidence in pharmaceutical decision-making and on regulatory and reimbursement issues in healthcare. He served as co-chair of the 2nd Panel on Cost-Effectiveness in Health and Medicine. He is the author or coauthor of over 300 papers in the medical literature and the author or coauthor of three books: Using Cost-Effectiveness Analysis to Improve Health Care (Oxford University Press, 2005); Cost-Effectiveness in Health and Medicine, 2nd edition (Oxford University Press, 2017); and The Right Price: A Value-Based Prescription for Drug Costs (Oxford University Press, 2021). Dr. Neumann has served as president of the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR). He is a member of the editorial advisory board of Health Affairs and the panel of health advisors at the Congressional Budget Office. He has also held several policy positions in Washington, DC, including special assistant to the administrator at the Health Care Financing Administration. He received his doctorate in health policy and management from Harvard University.   09:33 Is it imperative that drugs whose patents are expiring have their prices negotiated? 10:50 “We need innovation; we want to encourage innovation.” 11:01 Does this new law strike a balance between innovation and price regulation? 11:21 How are we assessing cost effectiveness and innovation in the drug space? 12:29 What's the problem with the current drug markets? 13:14 Why can't you rely on the drug market for the cost effectiveness of a drug? 14:13 Why very expensive drugs do not equate to poor value. 15:06 What are the likely outcomes of the IRA? 18:33 How does pharmacy budget factor into high-value drugs? 19:26 “Value-based pricing doesn't mean necessarily lower spending overall.” 22:59 What are the types of drugs that will be excluded from the IRA? 23:22 Who will the law create problems for? 24:44 What have pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) been doing to move forward with the new law? 26:04 What are plan sponsors doing right now? 28:32 What are the most important value metrics according to Dr. Neumann?   You can learn more at cevr.tuftsmedicalcenter.org or by reading The Right Price.   @PeterNeumann11 discusses #drugprice #negotiations on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast   Recent past interviews: Click a guest's name for their latest RHV episode! Stacey Richter (EP400), Dawn Cornelis (Encore! EP285), Stacey Richter (EP399), Dr Jacob Asher, Paul Holmes, Anna Hyde, Dea Belazi (Encore! EP293), Brennan Bilberry, Dr Vikas Saini and Judith Garber, David Muhlestein  

Analysts Don Kellogg and Roger Entner discuss the latest news in telecom, media, and technology.0:30: Trends from 2022 and what they could mean for 2023.4:01: FWA and 5G's impact on the cable industry.5:38: Promotional trends within the top carriers.6:45: Possible disruptions in 2023.9:10: Standalone Networks and what we have yet to see in 2023.10:55: We still have only four FCC Commissioners despite the Democrats' Majority position.Tags: telecom, telecommunications, business, wireless, cellular phone, cellular service, Recon Analytics, Don Kellogg, Roger Entner, Verizon, Comcast, Charter, FWA, fixed wireless access, cable, uncarrier, T-Mobile, AT&T, DISH, openRAN, Boost, Genesis Network, FCC, Net Neutrality, Title II,

20221217 Demand Our Access Originally Aired December 17, 2022, on ACB Media 5 In this second episode, Jonathan covered the most basic rights under Title II of the ADA including: ADA coordinator notice of rights complaint procedure self-evaluation and transition planning Sponsored by Jonathan Simeone

The city of Buffalo is updating it's documents regarding Title II and the ADA, after reports from WBFO found them inadequate and out of date. Also, NYS legislators have begun the slow process of giving themselves a pay raise, with a possible special session on that soon. And a Siena poll says crime and the economy top New Yorkers concerns heading into 2023.

Today's podcast is part of a series on food waste. When farmers produce more of a product than people are willing to buy, or when the demand for a product falls unexpectedly, food is wasted. What role do agricultural policies and politics play in creating and perpetuating cycles of supply challenges? Our guest today is Dr. Garrett Graddy-Lovelace of American University. Garrett is an agricultural policy expert and she studies the problem of food gluts through the lens of social sciences, international affairs, history and analysis of USDA data. Interview Summary   This podcast is co-sponsored by the Recipes Food Waste Research Network led by American University and funded by the National Science Foundation.   Norbert: Garrett, from your perspective, why do you think a historical policy analysis is useful in discussions of contemporary issues of food waste and loss?   It's a crucial question. The current situation of wasted food is uniquely contemporary and it's unprecedented, but its root causes have long roots. On one hand, there's a complicated but telling geography kind of spatial aspect to the wasted food fiasco we're in. We have vast global supply chains with pinch points of precarity. There are so few processors to butcher and process such vast quantities of meat. So few mega ports for all of these millions of shipping containers. So few companies owning all these markets and so few grain storage facilities for these mountains of corn and soy. So it's a spatial situation. But, it is also a historical situation. There are conditions and incentives driving commodity crop production and overproduction right now that have deep roots in US history, in global history, even in colonial history. So historical perspectives are crucial to help tell the why and the how. The current situation in configuration might seem natural or inevitable, but unpacking how we got here helps us understand, dismantle and reconfigure the policies, political economies and paradigms that got us in to this mess.   Brenna: Those are really interesting perspectives, Garrett, and I'm looking forward to hearing more. So since we are on the topic of policy now, how do you think Ag policy and particularly the Farm Bill has shaped or created food waste?   Good question. So the broader World Trade Organization began in the mid '90s and it's an extension of the general agreement on tariffs and trades, which was the Bretton Woods's Post World War II, World War I set of international governance paradigms. It really liberalized agricultural trade and arguably neoliberalized it. And so it set in motion a whole situation that we're in now which deregulated national and federal government policies around supply coordination, supply management. So from the mid '90s on, you've got a set of policies around the world that really opened up trade. But, it also opened up the incentives to compete with each other around the world. So farmers were competing with each other in this arguably race to the bottom of farm gate prices, which incentivized cycles of overproduction that we're in now. The policy shifts that happened domestically, and all of these countries around the world, emerged from the paradigms of the mid '90s. The WTO and the broader focused on moving enormous quantities of commodity crops around the world in a comparative advantage model. But it ended up creating enormous quantities of food circulating around the world that then is very conducive to supply chain gluts and to pinch points where there are blocks and a precarity that we're in now.   Norbert: Thank you for that. I would love for you to point out one particular historical policy that you think is critical for us to understand this.   The elimination of export subsidies was crucial and many of the intentions behind what ended up becoming the WTO were actually about decreasing dumping. So the anti-dumping measures are so crucial as a broader paradigm and a governance goal. But as you know better than others as Ag economists, the loopholes allowed for some countries like the US to continue overproducing a certain commodity crop and then offshoring it through complicated ways that were not explicit subsidization of exports. So the ending of export subsidies is a universal good, but it did not end the broader problem. And obviously, this is a exceptionally complicated topic, but the broader question of policy needs to be contextualized within political economy. So there's a set of political economies at work that we're in now, which gives inordinate power to private industry in terms of input suppliers and in terms of commodity crop purchasers. As a result, the situation we're in now is that you have a handful of firms who are price setters and they can really decide the price of inputs and the farm gate price of various commodity crops. And the broader configuration is that farmers are squeezed around the world with expectations and incentives of expensive input purchases, annually purchased inputs, and then farm gate prices that don't cover the cost of the production. So that's a political economic situation. The question is what's the role of policy? I think what's interesting for me and for Norbert and for others in our research team is that there's a long history of policies, governmental policies particularly in the United States, that have attempted to protect farmers from this squeeze. This treadmill of buying more inputs and trying to sell more and growing more to cover the cost of what they've invested in that particular season. And, it lends itself to overproduction unless there's a way to mitigate that kind of treadmill cycle of overproduction. So, the policies that we're interested in began in the 1920s and the 1930s which we'll talk about with the Agricultural Adjustment Act. They really were ended in the WTO in a convoluted way in the attempt to end trade distortions. There was a way in which the corporate interests or the private firms gained even more power and say in the broader trade and agricultural economics and practices around the world. I think the WTO is so fascinating because the intentions behind it are truly important. And many of the measures like the anti-dumping and the ending of subsidized, explicitly subsidized exports which are so deleterious, so destructive to local farm economies around the world were mitigated, but the loopholes have grown. And actually the disparity between kind of corporate interests and the private firms and farmers themselves, small and medium-sized farmers has grown even more egregious. So, the role of policy in that I think is what we're analyzing today.   Norbert: Garrett, you've done archival work looking at agricultural policy from the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the original Farm Bill legislation from 1933. What has inspired you to see food waste and loss as a critical issue?   It's a great question. The Farm Bill in its current iteration enables and exacerbates wasted food. But it would be, I think, reductive to say it causes it and stop the analysis there. So, this kind of takes some historical analysis. We're going to go back to the archives, but before we do, we kind of think about the 20th century. Over the course of the 20th century, the Farm Bill has become a behemoth mechanism for disposing of surplus commodity crop production. So if you think about Title I, Commodity, and Title II, Conservation, those actually have at their origin - the beating heart of the Farm Bill - an attempt to prevent another great depression economically, that's a commodity title, and another Dust Bowl. That is the environmental impacts of overproduction, Title II, conservation. So there was a supply management coordination attempt to end overproduction and end the price fallout of overproduction woven into the heart of Title I and Title II. Once you get to Title III which is Trade, and you go back to the archives, the justification for Title III was move this surplus. We've got to get rid of this growing pile of surplus. The Commodity Crop Corporation, the broader CCC arm of the government is trying to mitigate overproduction by buying the surplus and getting it off the backs of the farmers. But then it had a huge kind of glut. So trade was a matter of offshoring and offsetting the food aid and the food trade in the 1950s and the 1960s. And then frankly, Title IV nutrition, which has all of these noble crucial intentions of feeding the people actually is a surplus disposal mechanism as well when you look back at the archives. And even Title IX which is Energy, has a surplus disposal mechanism of corn in moving it into bioethanol. So the Farm Bill has kind of hidden overproduction through these surplus disposal mechanisms and not been able to prevent it. And then of course, we get into where we are now where why doesn't the research title fund investigations into wasted food interventions? Why aren't there discussion of composting systems or ecological biodigesters to divert methane from landfills in the research title? So right now, it's more what the Farm Bill doesn't do. It doesn't curtail excessive monopolies in the agrifood sector. It ends up subsidizing them. It doesn't provide nearly enough for regional adaptive supply chains or markets which are much more adaptive to shocks in the system like Ukraine or climate change. So the Farm Bill doesn't do what it needs to do, but it's not the root cause of wasted food.   Brenna: Those are really interesting points that I think many of us at least from an agricultural economist perspective don't necessarily talk about in that way. One thing I wanted to follow up is you mentioned the current Farm Bill doesn't really do much to address food waste. I think the most recent Farm Bill did establish the food waste and loss liaison to try to kickstart some food waste reduction initiatives. So I'm curious just to get your thoughts, would you say that that effort is not nearly enough?   Yes, it's such a good question. So the Miscellaneous Title is the best thing happening in the Farm Bill. All the farmers know and the practitioners and the activists and the scholars. And so, there's an optimistic way you could look at this and say there are such innovative, broadly far-reaching exciting pilot programs tucked into the Miscellaneous Title or even into the Horticultural Title around farmer's markets, around racial justice, around food waste prevention, wasted food prevention. But on a macro level, it's tucked into the Miscellaneous Title, oftentimes with discretionary funding, not mandatory, so you have to fight for it each five years. And the appropriations get divvied out, so it's not rock solid in terms of mandatory appropriations. And so there are wonderful pilot programs that began in the 2018 Farm Bill, frankly, directly because of scholars and activists and civil society clamoring for it. But on the macro level, the bulk of the Farm Bill itself is status quo in terms of commodity crop overproduction when you really kind of see where it's going and it's largely going to ethanol or to concentrated animal feeding operations, CAFOs, or to highly processed additives for foods that aren't nourishing. So yes, it's exciting that there are these micro provisions and there's these pilot programs that are so exciting tucked away into the Miscellaneous Title, but arguably the scale of the problem that we're in now demands a much more transformational approach to the Farm Bill.   Brenna: Thank you so much for weighing in on that. I was excited to hear your thoughts.   Norbert: Garrett, I know that you are committed to social justice, especially around food and agriculture. What is the social equity lens to food waste and loss that you think is important for people to consider?   Thank you for that. So wasted food is a tragedy of squandered farm work, top soil, water, energy, shipping containers, and single-use plastic wrapping. All of the labor, all of the time going into food that ends up becoming methane and egregious climate greenhouse gas. And so I think when we look at this situation, there's an issue of wasted resources, but there's also the injustice of the people who are doing much of the work along that supply chain to get that food to people's table themselves can't afford food. So the inequity, the acute injustice of food insecurity next to and even within the system of wasted food is a disaster. But, it's also defining of a failure of governance and a failure of our research institutions. There are so many smart people in the US, so many expensive labs, so many great research infrastructures and networks. Surely there's a way to coordinate these smart minds into analysis and interventions that prevent wasted food and that move agricultural production to where it needs to go, to hungry mouths and to people's plates and to remunerate food producers fairly for their harvests. So the urgency of wasted food has become one of the defining parts of my research and my teaching in my scholarship. In terms of the history of this, I was fascinated with how surplus is not used as a term. This is something that Norbert and I are researching. Ag economists and Ag policy experts don't use the words overproduction or glut or surplus these days. But if you go back into the archives, it is such a ubiquitous problem that in the archives, it's called the Farm Problem. It's actually just called the Farm Problem and it's the problem of overproduction. And so, a little bit of history here, World War I, there was a whole incentive structure by the US government to feed the allies over in Europe and win the war through wheat production. So all of these farmers in Europe and throughout the Middle East who were part of World War I were in the trenches. They needed wheat. So, the US ramped up wheat production. It actually incentivized farmers to go out into the prairies and dig up those deep-rooted prairie grasses and plant wheat, single season wheat. And prices were good. And so, what do farmers do when prices are good? They grow more. And so, there was more and more production in 1914, 1915, 1916. Then the survivors of World War I crawled out of the trenches, went back to their farms and grew their own wheat. Then there was too much wheat on the global market and prices started to go down. What do farmers do when prices go down? They grow more. So all of a sudden, US farmers were madly ripping up prairie grasses, deep rooted prairie grass, planting more wheat. There was so much wheat on the global market in 1918 that it crashed the prices. There was an agrarian economic crisis in the US in 1919 and 1920, and farmers went to DC and said, "Please help us end this cycle of overproduction. We're competing with ourselves, with each other, our neighbors, and it's suicidal." And so that began the broader political movement to have supply management with the price floor for farmer viability and a way to not overproduce and destroy the soil, which is what led to the Dust Bowl. By the time you get to the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933, you've got a whole system of supply management which was in place. It was dysfunctional. It was not perfect. It largely helped White male farmers and it had some other issues to excluding tenant farmers who were largely Black farmers in the deep south, but as a principle to stave off the ravages of just kind of capitalism unfettered in agriculture, it was important to think about as a precedent. And so, cut to 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, by the 1970s, it's really eroded the supply management and by the 1980s, 1990s, it's gone. By the 1996 Farm Bill, there's hardly any supply management or price floors left. I think what's interesting for us is that there's a powerful precedent from a governance perspective of ways to mitigate cycles of overproduction. Now we're in a situation where there's not only no mechanisms from a policy perspective to mitigate overproduction, it's enabled and totally forgotten. There's really an amnesia about these parody policies, these price floors, these supply managements, these non-recourse loans, these quotas, which again, were not perfect, but they were an honest recognition that you have to have some protection. Otherwise, the corporate buyers and the broader political economy will just drive down the farm gate price and the farmers individually will just overproduce to try to get out and exacerbate the problem. I think looking at the historical origin of the Farm Bill helps us have clues as to how we could update it. How we could expand it. How we could make it more fair for a broader diversity of farmers. How it could apply to much more diverse crops than just these eight commodity crops, these kind of handful of commodity crops that it was designed for. So how could parody pricing and supply management be updated for ecological production, nourishing food production for a whole new generation of BIPOC farmers? I think we're thinking about that history as inspiration for agricultural policies moving forward that coordinate supply and demand more wisely frankly.   Brenna: Those are really interesting perspectives. I had no idea about the Farm Problem language use and I'm really curious to hear more about what you and Norbert are doing and look forward to seeing those results in the future. I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about what food waste and loss looks like from an international perspective and what are some of the policies abroad or globally that you think contribute to the wasted food that we see today?   It's a great question, Brenna. I'll preface by saying there are myriad international perspectives. So I certainly don't want to presume to speak on behalf of these international perspectives, but I'll also say that one cannot address this issue from a national perspective alone. One never could, but particularly now because the US agricultural policies and practices and the actual food stuffs and the climate emissions are deeply connected to those around the world and vice versa. There's a dominant political economy that is really impacting farmers and fishers around the world. It's really fascinating that the millions of different agricultural, aqua agricultural food systems around the world are now related to each other through price setting that is globalized and through supply chain pressures. Even at this point, Ag extension and national governments are all working very closely with or for a few set of agro-corporate firms. There is this incredible interconnectedness and interconnectedness sounds great, but in this context, it is an interconnectedness to a set of private industries - Cargill, Archer-Daniels-Midland, Walmart, PepsiCo, Monsanto, Bayer - input suppliers and corporate buyers. They have inordinate influence on national governments and agricultural extensions and ministries of Ag around the world. And philanthropy - the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation - which is technically a philanthropic organization, but has deep ties to private industry from the standpoint of Microsoft data and agricultural data. Which is, frankly, as farmers say around the world, "my data is worth more than my product." There's an enormous political economy of agricultural data at work right now. So there is an interconnectedness around the world that we need to analyze.   There's also a set of political economies and paradigms around the world that are very powerful. A model of development that is so pervasive around the world is that there is, underdeveloped or developed, there is a paradigm or an expectation that farmers around the world will want to and need to industrialize their respective farms. And that expectation, that model or that paradigm demeans or denigrates a whole set of agricultures around the world that are small scale and that are low input and that are biodiverse and that are not export oriented. That are oriented toward feeding local farmer's markets or local village markets or local families or networks. So there's a systemic devaluation of farming practices that are oriented toward local or regional production that have agro-biodiversity at their heart, that have semi-subsistence or low input agricultural models at their heart. A systemic glorification of very high input, intensive export-oriented commodity crop monocultural overproduction. So that paradigm makes its way into Ag extension agents, makes its way into philanthropic donations, makes its way into agricultural aid, agricultural development funding. And that paradigm is global. Every village around the world is either internalizing the inferiority of their small-scale production and their biodiverse production or resisting it, frankly. There's a whole global movement that's resisting that paradigm and says actually a climate-resilient future would need to have agroecological production grounded in Indigenous and African diaspora foodways. A lot of culturally-specific, place-based agrarian knowledge, which is not necessarily export-oriented though it could be, but is more geared toward feeding or nourishing local villages or communities or networks. There is a whole global movement of farmers and farm coalitions that say why denigrate that as underdeveloped? Why not celebrate that as actually the future of climate-resilient, climate-just agroecological production.   Brenna: Garrett, I know that you are committed to social justice, especially around food and agriculture. So what is the social equity lens to food waste and loss that you think is really important for people to consider?   So thank you for that. I'll say the first one is that there is food insecurity. There's hunger in the system that's producing wasted food and that, as I've said before, is a tragedy and an injustice and a failure of research and governance to think through how we can prevent that. And, how we can move nourishing food to people who need it and while remunerating the farmers and the food providers and the fishers for the beautiful work of feeding people. So that's the most acute level. But I also want to say, getting back to history, I know that's one of the themes of today, looking at histories of policies are so important. The archives have so much to teach us. But also elders and farmer elders around the world have so much to teach us. So oral history is a methodology that I love and I respect and I use and particularly Indigenous and African diaspora and immigrant elders in the US who have such knowledge of agrarian practices, of agroecological production, of seed saving, of foodways, of nourishing foodways, of climate-resilient foodways. Those sets of knowledges have been frankly systematically devalued by academia - by my institutions - as underdeveloped or as passe or as irrelevant. But in fact, as climate crisis encroaches, those knowledges of how to forage in the forest, how to grow nourishing gardens, how to grow agrobiodiverse farms, how to raise livestock breeds, heritage breeds, these knowledges that have been devalued frankly along gender and class and racial lines need to be celebrated. There's an epistemic inequity at work in our current situation where the real knowledges of how to grow nourishing food and provide nourishing food have been devalued when right now we need those knowledges more than ever. So there's a whole reevaluation and reclamation of agrarian place-based agroecological knowledge that I think will help us, not just prevent wasted food and really re-localize and re-regionalize supply chains and markets and economies and ecologies, but also help us provide nourishing food for communities in a climate-resilient and climate-just way.   Bio:   Garrett Graddy-Lovelace researches and teaches agricultural policy and agrarian politics. A critical geographer, she draws upon political ecology and decolonial studies to research agricultural biodiversity conservation, agrarian cooperatives, land use decisions, and domestic and global impacts of US farm policies. This includes community-based research-action with grassroots groups on the Farm Bill (see disparitytoparity.org project). Her forthcoming book, The Power of Seeds & Politics of Agricultural Biodiversity, is with M.I.T. Press. She is co-PI for a SESYNC-NSF Pursuit, entitled "Diverse Pathways to Nourishment: Understanding How Agricultural Biodiversity Enhances Food Security, Sovereignty and Nutrition" and Senior Personnel for AU's $15M NSF RECIPES grant on Wasted Food. She was awarded the inaugural Provost Associate Professor title, the 2022 School of International Scholar-Teacher of the Year Award, and the SIS Excellence in PhD Mentoring Award. Graddy-Lovelace co-founded and co-leads School of International Service's Ethnographies of Empire Research Cluster, and the nation-wide Agroecology Research-Action Collective. She is a Faculty Affiliate for AU's Antiracist Research & Policy Center and Associate Director for the new Center for Environment, Community & Equity. Additionally, she works on and for open knowledge and Indigenous data sovereignty.

According to the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness there are 43 million people around the world living with blindness, and 300 million living with moderate to severe visual impairment. Put those statistics next to these: There are nearly 2 billion websites, and 550,000 created every day. Shouldn't sight-impaired people have the same access to these sites as sighted people? Of course they should. There is good news. After previously announcing guidance, the DOJ says new regulations are on the way under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which describes the obligations for state and local governments. My guests say there are many reasons to be excited about this. Ken Nakata is Co-Founder and Principal at Converge Accessibility, whose solutions help make sure websites and other technologies are accessible to people with disabilities. Ken is former Senior Trial Attorney with the DOJ Disability Rights Section where he developed nationwide ADA policies for the internet. He is a recipient of the Attorney General's Award for Excellence in Information Technology. He served as lead counsel for the interagency working group, making the federal government's information technology accessible.  He is founding and former board member of the International Association of Accessibility Professionals and serves on their certification committee.  Ken is passionate about the need for regulations to ensure greater accessibility to the internet for all people. You can read his latest post on the subject at the Converge Accessibility Blog. Joining Ken is Hiram Kuykendall, Chief Technology Officer at Microassist, an Austin-based learning and development consulting. Hiram is a technical leader with hands-on experience in instructional design and digital accessibility. He has more than 25 years' experience developing and managing custom applications on a variety of platforms and public and private sectors, supporting training and training related services. Hiram is also a frequent contributor to LexisNexis Mealey's Litigation Report: CyberTech and E-Commerce, which I launched when I was publisher there a thousand years ago. Hiram is passionate about promoting accessible technologies in the field of fields of e-learning and web and application development. This podcast is the audio companion to the Journal on Emerging Issues in Litigation. The Journal is a collaborative project between HB Litigation Conferences and the Fastcase legal research family, which includes Full Court Press, Law Street Media, and Docket Alarm. The podcast itself is a joint effort between HB and our friends at Law Street Media. If you have comments or wish to participate in one our projects please drop me a note at Editor@LitigationConferences.com.P.S. Anytime I make a self-effacing remark about my ignorance concerning this or any subject, it's strictly for entertainment value, a story I will cling to with every fiber in my being. 

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU'LL LEARN:04:28 - What an online private market is, what equity crowdfunding is, and how Title II of the JOBS Act made both possible.07:20 - How running a ratings business helped Chris with his own business.07:20 - How a ratings business remains objective when analyzing other private businesses.10:58 - What to look for when analyzing a private business and how it is different from analyzing a publicly traded company.33:20 - How Chris views diversification when investing in private companies and how important it is.35:47 - How returns in private businesses differ from traditional public stocks.44:12 - How investors actually realize returns and how they get liquidity.48:53 - What specific security types people should avoid as investments.49:25 - What SAFE is as an acronym (S-A-F-E), and not just the word “safe” as a security type.And much, much more!*Disclaimer: Slight timestamp discrepancies may occur due to podcast platform differences.EPISODE RESOURCESGet a FREE audiobook from Audible.Related episode: Investing Strategies and Personal Finance Tips w/ Shark Tank's Kevin O'Leary - MI058.HBO Documentary on Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes, The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley.Jason Calacanis' book Angel.Mohnish Pabrai's book The Dhandho Investor.All of Robert's favorite books.Find Pros & Fair Pricing for Any Home Project for Free with Angi.Reclaim your health and arm your immune system with convenient, daily nutrition. Athletic Greens is going to give you a FREE 1 year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D AND 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase.Confidently take control of your online world without worrying about viruses, phishing attacks, ransomware, hacking attempts, and other cybercrimes with Avast One. https://avast.com/Help protect your family's financial future with TD Term Life Insurance.Invest in high quality, cash flowing real estate without all of the hassle with Passive Investing.Push your team to do their best work with Monday.com Work OS. Start your free two-week trial today.Combine hundreds of search filters to quickly find better leads, close more deals, and unlock your investing potential with the power of PropStream!Our tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: TIP Finance Tool.Check out our favorite Apps and Services.Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) here.New to the show? Check out our Millennial Investing Starter Packs.Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors.Read this episode's transcript and full show notes on our website.Connect with Chris: Website | Twitter | LinkedInConnect with Robert: Website | Instagram | TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Analysts Don Kellogg and Roger Entner discuss the latest news in telecom, media, and  technology.  0:32: The Supreme Court's recent decision in West Virginia v. EPA. 2:11: How this ruling could impact the FCC. 6:37: How the legislative process could look moving forward on FCC issues such as Net Neutrality. 8:05: Other FCC responsibilities that will be impacted under this ruling. Tags: telecom, telecommunications, business, wireless, cellular phone, cellular service, Recon Analytics, Don Kellogg, Roger Entner, West Virginia v EPA, Congress, Environmental Protection Agency, Supreme Court, FCC, Net Neutrality, Title II, Next Wave, spectrum, spectrum authority, auctions, 2.5 gHz

The National Archives are investigating if the Secret Service deleted text messages from Jan 6. President Cocaine Mitch?! Also, the Biden Administration has received Justin's message. It's time to talk about their wins from the last two years. A new Net Neutrality bill is in the works, reclassifying broadband telecommunications as a Title II service - or common carrier - as it was under the FCC during the Obama administration. Is it likely to pass? Doug Woodson (Organizer and Regional Director for AFSCME Council 31 in Illinois) joins the show to discuss his life-long experience in union organization. But wait - there's more! Meg Sybert (County Clerk and Recorder of Bond County, Illinois, and also Tom's sister) provides her unique insight into running local elections in Southern Illinois.

Katy Washington serves as the Director in the Office of Disability Access at the University of North Texas. She has spent over sixteen years working with faculty and staff to facilitate an inclusive campus environment for disabled students in various educational settings to promote diversity, intersectionality, and access. Katy currently serves on the Board of Directors President-Elect for the Association on Higher Education and Disability (AHEAD). She advocates for equity, inclusion, and belongingness of all individuals across their identities. Katy believes that no one should have their experiences “othered” because they do not come from a place of privilege.While the Americans with Disabilities Act or ADA was passed in 1990, the topic of accessibility, accommodations, and inclusion in higher education continues to be a current and necessary topic of discussion. Students with disabilities face unique barriers to access, equity, and inclusion at colleges and universities, while institutions have an obligation under Section 504 and Title II to make their programming accessible. According to a report from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), in the 2015-2016 academic year, the most recent data available, 19% of all enrolled undergraduate students reported having a disability. Currently, several resources are available to learn more about ADA, accommodations, and access in higher education, including CITI Program's A 21st Century Approach to ADA Compliance: Equity and Access webinar.Learn more about CITI Program: https://about.citiprogram.org/ 

After the New Deal and the major cases about Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, there was an open question about the limits of congressional power under the Commerce Clause. The first cases after Wickard v. Filburn (1942) to hold acts of Congress unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause were United States v. Lopez (1995) Morrison v. United States (2000). Together with Gonzalez v. Raich (2005), these three cases put a distinctive mark on the Rehnquist Court's Commerce Clause jurisprudence and set up the more recent constitutional debate about the Individual Mandate provision in the Affordable Care Act.