Suchergebnisse

It turns out that making video games and making cities are both really hard.

In the Indonesian context, the royal court of Yogyakarta consistently symbolises culture and traditions. The model of the royal palace was selected to represent the Special Region of Yogyakarta in the Indonesia Indah project that showcases Indonesia’s cultural richness by featuring each province. Thus, the identity of Yogyakarta is inseparable from its culture and traditions, writes … Continued

Launch of 'Tomatoes and taxi ranks' and 'Urban food systems governance and poverty in African cities' at Africa Research Institute
The post Launch of 'Tomatoes and taxi ranks' and 'Urban food systems governance and poverty in African cities' first appeared on Africa Research Institute.
The post Launch of ‘Tomatoes and taxi ranks’ and ‘Urban food systems governance and poverty in African cities’ appeared first on Africa Research Institute.

On Wednesday, Pentagon Comptroller Mike McCord revealed that the Department of Defense had failed its sixth audit in a row, with no significant improvements over the last year.
"We are working hard to address audit findings as well as recommendations from the Government Accountability Office," McCord said in a statement. "The Components are making good progress resulting in meaningful benefits, but we must do more."
In a repeat of last year's audit, just one in four of the Pentagon's auditing units received a clean bill of financial health, though auditors made some progress in accounting for the agency's $3.8 billion in assets. McCord said that a clean audit likely remains years away, according to Reuters.
The Pentagon remains the only federal agency to have never passed an audit. Its failure to make significant progress has drawn scrutiny from lawmakers, including Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who called for an independent audit of the department.
"The recent failure of the Pentagon's 6TH audit couldn't make it clearer that we need accountability & transparency," Paul posted on X. "No institution is above scrutiny, especially the DoD [with] the largest budget of ANY [federal] agency."
The Republican-led House Oversight Committee also slammed the Pentagon for its financial troubles, arguing in a post on X that the department's "inability to adequately track assets risks our military readiness and represents a flagrant disregard for taxpayer funds, even as it receives nearly a trillion dollars annually."
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) said the news showed that it's "time to stop misdirecting hundreds of billions of dollars away from domestic and human needs to pad unnecessary budget lines for endless wars, failed weapons, & the Pentagon's corporate handouts."
The news could reinvigorate efforts to impose a 1 percent budget cut on any parts of the military that fail an audit, a policy that would "provide a much greater incentive to get financial books in order," according to Jennifer Knox of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
"[T]his isn't just a matter of clean accounting; it's a matter of security," Knox argued. "Ensuring that defense dollars are spent effectively and appropriately will improve performance while reducing spending."

Though federal law has required annual financial reports, the Department of Defense simply did not complete them until 2018. It has since failed each year.

The Internal Revenue Service gets something north of 100 million individual tax returns each year. So how does the IRS decide how to deploy its 6,500 auditors? It counts on the computer programs to flag returns that seems more likely to be understating income. For example, a highly-paid two-earner couple might have income well into … Continue reading The IRS Audit Algorithm and Racial Effects
The post The IRS Audit Algorithm and Racial Effects first appeared on Conversable Economist.

What's the latest thinking in fiscal and monetary policy? The Hutchins Roundup keeps you informed of the latest research, charts, and speeches. Want to receive the Hutchins Roundup as an email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Thursday. Auditing top-earning taxpayers generates more revenue than it costs Taxpayers in the 90th…

One important lesson that emerged from the pandemic is that governments are not able to provide all the services that urban citizens need in a crisis situation. For Southeast Asia, this is critical because local governments, especially, have a lack of expertise, capacity, and financial resources in disbursing assistance to urban citizens. Therefore, many community-based … Continued

A scathing new report from the California State Auditor finds that the state's Economic Development Department continues to mismanage the unemployment insurance program, resulting in "a substantial risk of serious detriment to the State and its residents."
The post Audit Finds California Continues to Mismanage Unemployment Benefits appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

The Cato Institute has filed a motion for a preliminary injunction against the Department of Justice over a long‐​standing Cato Freedom of Information Act request seeking internal DOJ audits of the Section 702 program.

This is terrible journalism:While [donating $1 billion to protect forests] is certainly notable, Bezos's commitment to protecting the environment serves as a stark reminder that much of his legacy and largely untaxed fortune was built by companies that have staggering carbon footprints. Amazon's carbon emissions have grown every year since 2018, and last year alone, when global carbon emissions fell roughly 7 percent, Amazon's carbon emissions grew 19 percent.Economic activity is (for the time being) carbon-intensive. Amazon constitutes a huge and (especially during the pandemic) growing portion of the US economy. There's nothing said here to suggest that Amazon is unusually inefficient (from an environmental perspective); the author is really just complaining that Amazon is a large and growing part of the economy. (Horrors! They even had the gall to keep the economy going during the pandemic, when other companies did the green thing and shut down, bless their empty coffers...)Obviously there are all kinds of climate policies that should've been passed long ago that would help to reduce the carbon intensity of the economy (carbon taxes, more investment in green energy & research, etc.). Our lack of those needed policies is the fault of politicians, voters, and the companies that lobbied against them. Blaming other companies that are simply involved in ordinary economic activity, by contrast, makes little sense.I think we all realize it'd be silly to blame, say, New York City for having a large carbon footprint. Sure, it contains a lot of people, and so inevitably has a large carbon footprint in absolute terms. But if NYC didn't exist those people would just live somewhere else -- and possibly somewhere much less carbon-efficient than a dense city can be. But isn't blaming ordinary large companies for their carbon footprints misguided in much the same way? No evidence tends to be offered to suggest that they're any worse proportionally than their smaller competitors, so it really seems like they're just being blamed for being large and successful (something that we could also say of NYC).

Jakarta, Indonesia, shows why you don't need central planners to get pedestrian-friendly urban design.

In The Architecture of Disability: Buildings, Cities, and Landscapes beyond Access, David Gissen contends that the focus on access in design around disability perpetuates inequalities, arguing instead for centralising disabled people in architectural and urban planning. Amy Batley finds that the book’s attempts to reframe disability in contemporary urban landscapes are overpowered by historical tangents and subjective claims. The Architecture of … Continued

We know that lobbyists have the power to influence politics. But not all lobbyists are working on behalf of corporate interest groups. Sometimes, city officials actually hire lobbyists to represent the interests of their constituents in the state legislature.

Why would cities do this? This is what New York University political science professor Julia Payson explores in her paper, "The Partisan Logic of City Mobilization: Evidence From State Lobbying Disclosures." She finds that local governments are more likely to depend on lobbyists when there are partisan and ideological mismatches with their state legislators.

Nigeria's shantytowns are more functional than its centrally planned gated communities.