January 24, 2016

Chrysler admits cars were hacked. Sends out some 1.4 million

Thumb Drives, so owners can update their cars' software.

What had gone wrong? Well, outside of a hack affecting the cars' acceleration, I guess not much.

From the article:

It’s impossible to say whether or not the company would have issued the recall if it weren’t for the original Wired story, but there is a clear cause and effect here — call the manufacturers out on their failings and they will address them. If we don’t? That’s a scary thought.

The U.S. government has responded as well. Senators Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) have introduced a new bill called The Security and Privacy in Your Car Act (SPY Car Act). The legislation will direct the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Federal Trade Commission to set industry-wide benchmarks to protect driver safety and privacy, shining regulatory light on an issue that was largely contained within the automotive sector until now.

More at the following link:
http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/hacking-connected-cars-jeep-recall-spy-car-act-opinion-news/

January 15, 2016

Question submitted by truedelphi

January 8, 2016

RHODE Island Teachers Assoc asks FBI for help in pension scandal.

http://www.ibtimes.com/wall-street-fine-print-retirees-want-fbi-probe-pension-investment-deals-2250476


Diane Bucci and her fellow retired Rhode Island schoolteachers were angry about a deal last year to cut their promised retirement benefits. For 28 years, the elementary school teacher devoted between 7 and 9 percent of her paycheck to the state’s pension system. In return, the 72-year-old had been promised a consistent cost-of-living increase to make sure her retirement stipend kept pace with inflation. Now, though, state officials were trimming her check in the name of replenishing the depleted pension fund.

There was, however, a sliver of hope — or so it seemed: If the pension system could generate better investment returns and amass 80 percent of the money needed to pay current and future retirees, the annual cost-of-living increases would return.

“There was a lot of unrest and anger among teachers, but we buckled down and focused on how we could get to solvency,” said Bucci, who is on the board of the 700-member Rhode Island Retired Teachers Association. “So even though we aren’t Wall Street experts, we just started to ask questions about how the pension fund was managed, and what it was invested in. That’s when we realized the fees we’ve been paying to the investment companies were the problem.” Those levies — which hit $79 million last year — were the product of the state’s recent investment strategy. Following a controversial
national trend, Rhode Island pension officials led by then-General Treasurer Gina Raimondo shifted roughly a quarter of the state’s pension portfolio into high-fee hedge funds, private equity firms and other so-called “alternative investment" funds.
(More at link in the first line of the OP)
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We have a gazillion dollar a year Military and Defense fund program so that the Red Chinese, the Russians and Iranians can't come here and enslave us. But meanwhile our own public officials are letting Wall Street do just that!