Month: March 2007

Good is nothing like great

Fire 50% if your salesforce. Then, give the remainder, the top people, a big raise, and use the money left over to steal the best salespeople you can find from other industries or even from your competition. You’ll end up with fewer salespeople. But all of them will be great.

Farm Subsidies

Shining light on the biggest waste of taxpayer money ever.
2007-04-04: In celebration of the new annotated Google Maps, I have created 2 maps that show your taxes at work:

Top EU CAP farm subsidy in the UK: $700 millionTop USDA farm subsidy in the US: $541 million

The top recipient of EU CAP farm subsidies in the UK got $700M, the top recipient of USDA farm subsidies in the US got $541M.

2007-08-28: Nice complement to my pork mapshop maps.
2007-11-08: This is why I make farm subsidy maps 🙂

eliminating farm subsidies in the first world and liberalizing trade would produce annual benefits of $2.4t, with 50% of that accruing to the third world.

2008-06-10: Nice! They now have their own maps, starting with Sweden. Fight the pork.

Life as an Airport Screener

Last fall, Barbara S. Peterson applied to work as a Transportation Security Administration screener. Her mission: to investigate reports that despite a 5-year, $20B overhaul of the passenger screening system, checkpoint personnel are failing at the job. Being hired was only her first surprise.

an actor in this security theater tells all

Better Media?

“The easiest thing in journalism is to create heat. The hardest is light. We’re in the light business.” NewsHour might be in the light business, but there are a lot of heavy hitters watching as PBS has become the network of record by booking the best and the brightest in their fields for interview and analysis.

there is hope for parts of the mainstream media: NPR is now the “you don’t treat me like i am an idiot.” on the other hand, a lot of media considers itself high quality but is total garbage, such as the NYT.

€100B subsidy transparency

wow

the biggest release of information held by governments to the public and the media since the creation of the European Union. All 27 EU countries will disclose data revealing details of some €100bn given in subsidies by the Eurotaxpayer every year to farmers, food companies, industrial regeneration schemes and the fishing industry, from the Black Sea resorts in Bulgaria and Romania to the Canary Islands and Madeira.