Census records are gathered every 10 years and used to:
Voter registration records are gathered/updated constantly and used by the local and state government to:
Elections are won by the politician with the most votes. Election results, state funding, schools, roads, prisons, etc. are not affected by voter registration data.
Let’s say a citizen registers in multiple local districts in a single House of Representatives district. It is assumed that polling station workers will recognize the citizen on return visits. The citizen has one fake ID per local district. The citizen drives to each polling station and casts a vote for a party. At the end of the day there are 10 extra votes for a political party.
The number of “Kiss me I Voted” stickers on the citizen’s jacket might be a dead giveaway. Even if the citizen is savvy enough to remove them after each vote – I still don’t believe in organized registration/ voter/ driving rings. It is way too cumbersome.
The only way in which voter registration fraud could actually affect an election is if the voting stations had a collusion with ACORN to submit votes on behalf of bogus registrants. If this was true, there would be thousands of poll station workers in on the secret. I find it hard to believe this many people would remain silent after all this time.
ACORN has never been charged with stuffing ballots or altering legitimate ballots.
rottenacorn.com² has a list of charges brought against the organization. Falsified ballot initiative signatures appear to be the most severe infraction (in my opinion). These ballot initiatives were asking for an increase in the minimum wage to be added to the ballot.
When a ballot initiative receives the minimum number of required signatures, the initiative is added to the ballot for the next election. Ultimately, the voters are responsible for passing or blocking the proposed legislation.
It appears that ACORN stepped over a legal line while attempting to help lower income individuals and families. In my opinion, they have only helped get the ball rolling on certain issues.
Pasting PHP code into the Module Manager or Snippet Editor can be extremely frustrating. Copy/paste your code into a file under /assets/modules/{module-name}/{module-name}.module.php or assets/snippets/{snippet-name}/{snippet-name}.snippet.php.
For modules, delete all PHP source in the Module Manager editor and paste:
<?php require_once($modx->config['base_path'] . "assets/modules/{module-name}/{module-name}.module.php"); ?>
For snippets, delete all PHP source in the Create/edit Snippet textarea and paste:
<?php require_once($modx->config['base_path'] . "assets/snippets/{snippet-name}/{snippet-name}.snippet.php"); ?>
Most of the modules I develop have overlapping functionality. I like to move generic/overlapping functions into an external file and include them in my modules and snippets. This practice helps keep my main module and snippet code tidy. If you prefer an object-oriented approach, you can use classes instead of procedural functions.
As an example, my module ‘user_manager.module.php’ includes a ‘user_manager.inc.php’. This inc.php file is included in the admin area module and front-end snippet.
The following code snippet will give you a quick overview of how to access the database from a MODx module:
function getUserTotalPoints($web_user_id) { global $modx; $web_user_id = $modx->db->escape($web_user_id); $tp = $modx->db->config['table_prefix']; $fields = 'SUM(tbl_points.points) AS total'; $from = $tp . 'web_user_competency_points AS tbl_points'; $where = 'tbl_points.web_user_id=' . $web_user_id; $result = $modx->db->getRow($modx->db->select($fields, $from, $where)); return intval($result['total']); }
while($row = $modx->db->getRow($result))
Refer to http://wiki.modxcms.com/index.php/API:DBAPI for more information.
A single module may have more than one section or state. I use an ‘opcode’ to keep track of the current module state. For more information visit: http://svn.modxcms.com/docs/display/MODx096/Writing+the+module+code
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Tort reform only affects civil lawsuits. A civil lawsuit is where a victim “brings a case for money damages against the offender or a third party for causing physical or emotional injuries.” ¹
The logic of Tort Reform follows this (or a similar) pattern:
In short: when the malpractice insurance companies are happy, doctors and hospitals are happy.
In short: when doctors and hospitals are happy, patients are happy.
The success marker chains start with the most powerful entity (insurance companies) and ends with the least powerful (consumers). This is known as “Trickle-Down Economics.” The idea is that by helping private companies increase revenue, their wealth will “trickle down” to consumers.
According to the most recent CBO estimate tort reform could reduce the federal deficit by $54 billion over the next 10 years. The current health reform bill does not apply a particular tort reform strategy. Instead, it offers grants to states who wish to experiment with different approaches to tort reform.
The positive budget implications of tort reform are tangible and blocking any Tort Reform laws is short-sighted. At the same time, where do we draw the line? Is it right for the government to tell you how much you’ve suffered? Why do individuals feel entitled to money they did not earn?
The Library of Congress has a website for accessing proposed and passed legislation at: http://thomas.loc.gov/. Searches can be conducted with text criteria or bill numbers. Advanced searches allow visitors to break searches down by: session of congress, date ranges, congressman, and so on.
Every bill in Congress is available through the website above. More importantly, every bill has an Excerpt page which explains the bill’s provisions in plain English.
Let’s try to find the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act:
The bill’s summary page will appear next. The summary page provides quick access to:
Click the ‘All Information (excerpt text)’ link to view the Layman’s explanation of the bill. This particular bill is a bit heavy (full text is ~900 pages, excerpt is ~60 pages).
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President Ronald Reagan signed the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985. One of the provisions was the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act. The EMTALA requires hospitals to treat life threatening conditions regardless of citizenship, legal status, or ability to pay.
This scenario applies to illegal immigrants, lower income individuals, and anyone uninsured:
The patient is forced into bankruptcy if: they cannot pay out of pocket, they have no insurance, or their insurance company refuses to pay. Approximately 62% of personal bankruptcies in America are caused by medical-related expenses. The study in the previous link has some caveats, which are explained here.
Charitable donations decrease the hospital’s profit margins over time. The hospital will eventually raise its prices for goods and services to stay profitable. The comptroller of Texas estimated the treatment of illegal immigrants cost $1.3 billion in 2006.
When hospital prices increase, health insurance companies are forced to reimburse more money for the same services. When a health insurance company sees an increase in treatment payouts, it raises premiums for consumers.
Health insurance premiums increase regardless of consumer diet, exercise, smoking habits, and timely payments.
If you have health insurance you are already paying for illegal immigrants, the poor, and uninsured to receive emergency care – but you must jump through five hoops. Under the new health reform legislation, it takes fewer hoops.
Taxonomy-based risk identification is a loosely structured method for quantifying risks during the planning phase(s) of software development.
A project manager interviews developers using a questionnaire to identify risks in different project areas. These areas are referred to as “classes”.
http://www.sei.cmu.edu/pub/documents/93.reports/pdf/tr06.93.pdf
This PDF contains the TBRI abstract and the following topics:
It’s probably best to use a separate tool for the following project tasks:
If you have not already selected a Wiki package, I recommend reviewing these links:
After you have selected and installed the Wiki of your choosing, it is time to move on to structuring and securing content.
I chose MediaWiki because of its simple installation process and configuration through LocalSettings.php. A friend of mine brought up a good point – most people will be familiar with MediaWiki because Wikipedia uses it; everyone has visited Wikipedia.org.
Determine what topics you would like to store in the Wiki and how it will be organized before adding content. This planning will prevent dead links and reworking the Wiki’s structure. Refer to MediaWiki’s category help page for more information and recommendations.
By default, wikis are not built to enforce strict access to pages, categories, and media. Custom extensions can provide Access Control List (ACL) behavior. I would adopt an ACL extension only after considering the sensitivity of your Wiki content. This list contains potential MediaWiki vulnerabilities for adopting 3rd party ACL extensions but may also apply to your wiki software. If you use a MediaWiki alternative, see if it has a built-in ACL or documentation regarding the risks of using ACL plugins.
I recommend installing a new Wiki for each client and protecting the directory with an .htaccess file in favor of using a 3rd party ACL.
Storing Wiki contents outside of development repositories creates a divergence between project plans and project code since Wikis have their own version control mechanism. This divergence does not introduce risk if the latest project plan is always relevant regardless of the code’s stability. I would recommend keeping Wiki content and code separate because duplicate version controls on a project asset is dangerous.
In Flash, go to the Commands menu and verify the “Create Class” command is available. If the “Create Class” command is not present verify the ASUnit extension is installed and enabled in the Extension Manager. You shouldn’t need to restart your machine.
import AllTests;
var at:AllTests = new AllTests();


This is easy to fix; just enter “com.Example” in the Class Name text box (highlighted in blue above). All classes must use namespaces.

If you’ve decided to add unit testing to your arsenal mid-project try the following:
If you run into class conflicts check to see if Flash’s global class paths are conflicting with the local Flash paths. To do this in CS3, go to the Edit menu, Preferences item, ActionScript category, ActionScript 2.0 Settings button. In reference to the example above, if your global class paths contain “./classes/” and your testing FLA class paths contain “../flash/classes/” Flash will happily notify you of a conflict.
As a general rule of thumb you should avoid negative discussion topics. I should mention this has little to do with sugar coating a slacking developer or ignoring potential problems. Conflicts should be identified and resolved but Friday Meetings are not a suitable environment for this process.
The Friday Wrapup Meeting is conducted at the end of the day on Friday, which gives developers about five minutes after the meeting before they head home for the weekend. If a developer receives schedule pressure for delivering a product, they must wait until Monday to resolve the problem. Negative feedback during Friday Meetings is counter-productive because there is no way for the developer to immediately resolve conflicts without losing time in their personal life. Developers should be encouraged to enjoy their weekend, not stress over work.
The project manager’s role during Friday Wrapup Meetings is to analyze and transcribe individual developer motivations. Listening to the things that excite your developers reveals potential motivation techniques.
From my examples above you can see I’m leaning towards displaying things developers have worked on in the past. Displaying income earned over the past month or a screenshot of an entire website is a good start but it doesn’t highlight individual contributions. Remember that managers and developers have fundamentally different motivations. Managers are traditionally focused on success while developers are more focused on learning and personal growth.
Side-effects may include but are not limited to:
McConnell, Steve. Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press, 1996.
McConnell, Steve. Professional Software Development. Boston, MA: Addison Wesley, 2004.
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