Will scammers hide behind new law for private tax collectors? →

Congress, in a law that took effect this month, instructed the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), against its objections, to use private collection agencies for “outstanding inactive tax receivables.” Before the legislation passed, the IRS Taxpayer Advocate Service pointed to a number of problems with this approach, including that it loses money and had failed twice before – a characterization that congressional proponents reject.
But since those attempts, there has been a growing menace that makes the use of bill collectors even more problematic. Generally, the IRS does not contact taxpayers by phone. But legitimate bill collectors and tax scammers do. Once the private collection program begins, which Congress says should be early next year, it will be even more difficult to distinguish between the real and fake bill collectors.

Merit vs Equality? The argument that gender quotas violate meritocracy is based on fallacies →

One of the sticks used to beat gender quotas with is the argument of meritocracy. This is being repeated time and again; the use of gender quotas in Ireland and the appointment of a gender-balanced cabinet in Canada are two recent examples. The argument is underpinned by three fundamental assumptions. The first is that recruitment without gender quotas is meritocratic. The second is that there is a clear, objective definition of meritocracy in political recruitment. And the third is that gender is an inherently unmeritocratic criterion for political representation. I argue that none of these assumptions is true, and hence that the argument is fundamentally flawed.

The Serial Swatter →

SWATting: prank-calling major threats into police departments to try to get them to harass unwitting victims, showing up in force, on high alert. Police are finally catching on to this kind of dangerous pranking. Unfortunately the entire legal system is far behind the times on this, as it is on a lot of internet-based crime.

Grand promises of Paris climate deal undermined by squalid retrenchments →

By comparison to what it could have been, it’s a miracle. By comparison to what it should have been, it’s a disaster.
Inside the narrow frame within which the talks have taken place, the draft agreement at the UN climate talks in Paris is a great success. The relief and self-congratulation with which the final text was greeted, acknowledges the failure at Copenhagen six years ago, where the negotiations ran wildly over time before collapsing. The Paris agreement is still awaiting formal adoption, but its aspirational limit of 1.5C of global warming, after the rejection of this demand for so many years, can be seen within this frame as a resounding victory. In this respect and others, the final text is stronger than most people anticipated.
Outside the frame it looks like something else. I doubt any of the negotiators believe that there will be no more than 1.5C of global warming as a result of these talks. As the preamble to the agreement acknowledges, even 2C, in view of the weak promises governments brought to Paris, is wildly ambitious. Though negotiated by some nations in good faith, the real outcomes are likely to commit us to levels of climate breakdown that will be dangerous to all and lethal to some. Our governments talk of not burdening future generations with debt. But they have just agreed to burden our successors with a far more dangerous legacy: the carbon dioxide produced by the continued burning of fossil fuels, and the long-running impacts this will exert on the global climate.

Saudi voters elect 20 women candidates for the first time →

One can hope this represents a sea change...

Saudi voters elected 20 women for local government seats, according to results released to The Associated Press on Sunday, a day after women voted and ran in elections for the first time in the country’s history.
The women who won hail from vastly different parts of the country, ranging from Saudi Arabia’s largest city to a small village near Islam’s holiest site.
The 20 female candidates represent just one percent of the roughly 2,100 municipal council seats up for grabs...

The Destination in Paris Climate Talks Was a Journey That Begins Now →

Between the tumultuous breakdown in Copenhagen in 2009 and the cheers and bubbly in Paris on Saturday, climate change diplomacy underwent a grand metamorphosis.
For more than two decades, the world’s variegated nations were — impossibly — trying to undertake a common (but differentiated) journey toward some grand top-down solution. The outcome that emerged in Paris, in contrast, is implicitly a century-long journey, with 195 countries pursuing a safer human relationship with the climate system, but taking varied paths at varied paces to get there.
The new architecture is a far better fit for the momentous, “super wicked” challenges that are emerging in trying to supply societies with adequate, affordable energy without overheating the climate...

How the Justice System Fails Us After Police Shootings →

Two weeks ago, the police officer who shot Laquan McDonald in Chicago was charged with first-degree murder. Since then, the police superintendent was fired, and the Department of Justice announced that it will begin a large-scale investigationinto the Chicago Police Department. Meanwhile, in Baltimore, one of the police officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray is standing trial.
You might think these high-profile cases mark a turning point in the nation’s response to fatal police violence. But 1,058 people have been killed by police this year to date alone, and most of the time, no legal charges follow. In my own state of Georgia, 171 people have been shot dead by police since 2010, and there have been zero prosecutions.
As a former federal prosecutor and a criminal procedure professor, I’ve been studying how prosecutors handle police violence cases. How do they deal with the conflict of interest raised by investigating the police departments they work with? Who determines whether a civilian death is justified, as the vast majority are found to be?
The results are not pretty.