Wall Street - Just Asking...

Regarding Wall Street:

1. Why is there no provision for restitution of the obscene salaries taken by officers of the failed banks and brokerage firms?

2. These securities, CDOs, etc. were deemed "risky". Why is that now that they have failed, the consequences of the risk does not fall on those who engineered these bogus instruments...instead it is falling on the taxpayers? The firms should pay...the officers should pay, the traders should pay, and the bankers should pay before the government (taxpayer) should pay. And why hasn't a single bank or brokerage firm offered its own assets, the limos, the executive dining rooms, the corporate jets, the office tower and other real-estate, as a partial miniscule down payment in mitigating this disaster?

3. Why, in the plans outlined today (Tues 9/23) there appears to be no provision for the taxpayers who are assuming these worthless securities, to participate in the REWARD that will presumably (well, maybe) accrue when the stock market goes back up? Again why is the RISK socialized while the reward has heretofore been privatized?

4. Why, throughout the discussion of the past couple of days, has there been no provision for those who were stupid or gullible enough to apply for and receive things like 'no documentation mortgages". Shouldn't these people who were ruthlessly exploited by the banks get bailed out *before* the predatory lenders?

Just asking ...

Can This Grant Be Saved? Ideas for Rescue

We recently had a rejection for a federal grant application. This was the first time we had applied to this agency. We received five reviews from the peer reviewers, and there were some definite commonalities among the five reviewers. Naturally, we'd like to resubmit our application. Here are some of the objections to the first application, and some possible remedies.

1. Problem: There was some definite jargon that we didn't properly address. One word was transformation. How were we going to transform the field? Our plan lacks detail which supports the feasibility of our ability to transform when implemented. Remedy: Be more explicit about what the transformation is, and how we believe can effect that transformation.

2. Problem: Little description on how our target population (in our case students) would be recruited, targeted, and kept engaged in the project. Remedy: Actually, we thought we had addressed this somewhat, but clearly not to the extent that the reviewers expected. They also requested how we would target minority and disadvantaged students.

3. Problem: Target population not involved in the development of intervention. Remedy: Reconfigure project to include opportunities for students and teachers to have input on how the project progresses. Have one or more serve on the advisory board or implementation team?

4. Problem: Applicant doesn't reply evidence that the program is either project or inquiry-based. Remedy: Need to include this discussion

5. Problem: Applicant doesn't provide a clear list of project goals and objectives

6. Inconsistencies found between the budget and the narrative. For example there are different numbers of personnel on the spreadsheet budget, with different titles, than are described in the narrative. Remedy: After the committee works on all the bits and pieces of the application, a single person needs to pull everything together and reconcile all the pieces. Then, send it back out to readers before submitting.

7. Problem: No clear evaluation plan. Remedy: This was indeed what I considered to be the weakest part of our application, and I assumed it would have to be fixed even if our application was accepted as it just wasn't strong enough. For example we didn't have:

• Pre and Post test objectives
  
• A qualified third-party evaluator
  
• Samples of test instruments which illustrate how we would conduct the evaluation.

Chron This Week: Hiring and Firing

Hiring and Firing are major themes in the Chronicle of Philanthropy this week as a story starting on page 11 discusses the tightening market for senior fund-raisers. Seems counterintuitive.

Also a nice article about recruiting younger workers. This points to an online report from the Project Roundtable on Nonprofit Recruitment and Retention.


Not in the paper this week, but of interest in our local news are the problems that Fort Ticonderoga is having with the abrupt departure of a major funder. Here's a link at the Plattsburgh NY Press-Republican.

Odds and Sods

Open source video security application:

http://www.zoneminder.com/ via VoIP Insider

Preston Loves Chrome. Larry, less so... not least because every time I attempt to read a .pdf file the Adobe browser hangs up. Oh, yeah, its a beta, and if it is like almost every other Google application, it will stay a beta for months if not years. Also, there are reports of odd licensing terms, however, according to PC-World that has been fixed. Meanwhile, the latest FireFox, version 3.0 seems to be fine...and I've stuck with Safari on the Mac.

Smashing Magazine has their desktop wallpapers out for September, both with and without a calendar.

How to demo your startup. Great hints for doing demo over the phone or using web-based demo tools.

The Windows XPe chat, has a number of items about the new version Windows Embedded.

NAT with videoconferencing etc. etc.

The wiki documentation for Ekiga has a nice discussion of how to deal with routers when using SIP and H.323.�

Browsing with Google Chrome does indeed seem a little more rapid. I'm not sure I'll migrate from Firefox, but I like the clean look, and so far it seems to work flawlessly. ��