Dear Colleagues,
As some of you may know, StatSoft has launched a program to offer free Enterprise Business Analytics software to aid struggling companies in Greece, Portugal, and Spain with the intent to reduce the terrible social cost for people who live in those developed and, until only recently, thriving nations, and where now 25% of the population cannot afford the most basic necessities such as adequate nutrition or health care.
The purpose of this letter is to invite you to join this initiative, which will not only reduce human suffering but which has also global, long-term benefits of reducing the risk to the Euro and the European economic system, which could unravel should the Euro fail.
In our (software) industry, we are in a unique position to help tremendously those...
Lifestyle
Dear Colleague,
Proposed Welfare Benefits Bill
As you know, Osborne announced that the Coalition is to bring forward before Christmas a Bill to sanction the cuts in welfare benefits set out in yesterday’s autumn statement.
We all know that there is no need for primary legislation to implement these cuts and that this is his crude and blatantly cynical attempt to lay what he considers will be a political trap for Labour.
In his crude political terms, his obvious aim is to be able to claim that if Labour votes against or abstains on his Bill then we are on the side of the so called skivers whilst the Tories are the champions of the strivers. If we do vote for the Bill he will then cite our vote as support for his attack on benefits.
Like many right wing politicians over the...
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Dear Senator:
Our organizations strongly oppose S. 728, the Water Resources Development Act of 2005 (WRDA 2005). This legislation includes more than $17 billion worth of projects and policy changes for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, including one project that will waste more than $3 billion on the Upper Mississippi River alone. Additionally, ourorganizations are concerned that this legislation not only fails to strengthen taxpayer protections but actively weakens existing protections such as requiring a rigorous quantitative benefit-cost analysis of Corps projects.
Over the last several years, numerous independent entities such as the U.S. Army Inspector General, the Government Accountability Office, and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) have found that the Corps of...
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Dear members of the Cabinet Sub-Committee on Climate Change,
Having recently attended the UN climate talks in Lima, Peru, I wanted to write to you as you prepare for your first meeting of 2015.
While the end result of the talks was disappointing, with a huge amount of unfinished business, there was also a clear recognition that 2015 must be the year in which action on climate change takes significant and meaningful steps forward.
The meeting offered another clear reflection of the public support for climate action. I joined Latin America’s largest ever climate march, 15,000 people on the streets of Lima calling for climate justice and that echoed Edinburgh’s most recent People’s Climate March in September 2014, when 3,000 people joined hundreds of thousands across the world to...
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Dear Michael,
I am deeply appreciative of your efforts to encourage your readers to take a closer look at where their food comes from. I especially like the way you lead your readers to understand that their everyday choices do make a difference both in the food supply chain and the environmental sustainability of the planet. As you point out in the "Big Organic" (Supermarket Pastoral) chapter of your book, credible information about the sources of our food in conventional foods stores is limited to non-existent.
As the co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market, I lead an innovative business that has offered customers numerous choices in natural and organic foods for more than 27 years. Yes, the business has grown in size — from one store to our current 184 — keeping pace with the...
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Dear Gordon:
I am writing to let you know that we are making a public commitment not to commercialize sterile seed technologies, such as the one dubbed "Terminator." We are doing this based on input from you and a wide range of other experts and stakeholders, including our very important grower constituency.
As you know, sterile seed technology is one of a class of so called "gene protection systems." This is a group of technologies, all still in the conceptual or developmental stage, that could potentially be used to protect the investment companies make in developing genetically-improved crops, as well as possibly providing other agronomic benefits. Some would work by rendering seeds from such crops sterile, while others would work by other means, such as deactivating only the...
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Dear Military Benefits Haters –
We’ve been having a rough go of it lately, haven’t we? There you are, a civilian, absolutely convinced that the average service member is not worth his weight in pay and benefits. And here I am, a military family member wondering how we got to this point – and why you are so misdirected about the value of the military.
I think the problem may be that you are confused. You’re there, sitting on your civilian sofa in your civilian house in the town of your choice after coming home from your civilian 9-5 job. You are feeling a little annoyed by the crazy awesome salaries that servicemembers and military retirees score because, in comparison, yours aren’t that amazing. And hey! Your taxes are paying for us to have this fabulous stuff! You are incensed...
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Dear California foundations and foundations that fund in California:
The California Association of Nonprofits -- CalNonprofits -- is a statewide policy alliance of 9,400 nonprofits that both advocates for the nonprofit community to government, philanthropy and the public, and provides important support to nonprofits such as employee health insurance. With offices in San Francisco, Sacramento and Los Angeles, CalNonprofits welcomes comments and suggestions on this Open Letter as well as all aspects of our work.
On January 1 of 2016, California’s minimum wage will be raised to $10.00 per hour: an 11% increase. In some cities and counties it will rise even higher. We were glad to see that many California foundations supported these increases by funding activists and advocates seeking...
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Dear NHS England and care.data Advisory Group colleagues,
As you know, medConfidential believes there need be no conflict between good research, good ethics and good medical care and that – taken as a whole, in balance – every data flow in the NHS is capable of being consensual, safe and transparent. We welcome indications in Tim Kelsey’s letter to stakeholders[1] that NHS England appears to be moving towards accepting the implications of this principle, even if it is not yet clearly articulating the principle itself.
“Phased roll out”
Given the absence of information regarding the “early adopter” pilots last year[2] and the self-evident failure to learn sufficient lessons from them, we would appreciate much greater clarity and transparency regarding the scope and nature of the...
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Dear Jeff Bezos,
bezosIn your position, I imagine that you rarely have an opportunity to receive feedback from one of your temporary-contract employees. I thought you should have some input. I hope you find this useful.
Having just completed my maximum of eleven months of contract work Amazon allows, I thought I would share my thoughts on your practice of hiring a staff that is made up of temporary-contract workers. Although it may seem like the company is saving money — because you don’t have to provide temporary workers with medical coverage or paid vacation time — the revolving door of new hires encourages low quality work, inconsistent productivity and wastes useful resources on training.
I joined the X-Ray for TV and Movies development team in its infancy. [“X-Ray for Movies...
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