Archive for the ‘Government’ Category

• Figures of Speech Served Fresh
  

• State and Local Government Search Engine
  

• 101 Best Websites for 2011 for discovering and sharing your family history
  

• Digital Journalist’s Legal Guide
  

• U S Commodity Futures Trading Commission – Reparations Sanctions in Effect 1984 – Present
  

• US Commodity Futures Trading Commission – Administrative Sanctions in Effect 1975 – Present
  

• SEC Trading Suspensions
  

• Search Historical SEC EDGAR Archives
  

• Securities and Exchange Commission Forms List
  

• SEC Investment Company Act Notices and Orders
  

• Municipal Securities Disclosures

• NASAA – North American Securities Administration Association
  

• SEC Investment Adviser Search

• Compliance Reporter

• Securities Investor Protection Corporation

The rest of my favorite links are here.

• AncestorSearch using Google Custom Search

• Security, Surveillance, GPS Tracking, Camera Systems, Spy Devices

• Lost, Unclaimed, Abandoned Assets

• "torrance" site:https://businessfilings.sos.ca.gov – Google Search

  Example of Ca SOS search by address, town, Agent or company name: "torrance" site:https://businessfilings.sos.ca.gov – Google Search Not all corporations are included.

• Historical newspapers and obituaries – free to search

• Newspaper Archives – fee

• Newspapers – Footnote – images – free to search

• Newspapers – search pages and images – free

• How can I see old posts on my Facebook wall?

• Lasting Memories – Palo Alto, Ca area obituaries

• Newswise: news for journalists

• Biznar: Deep Web Business Search

• GovSpeak: A Guide to Government Acronyms & Abbreviations

• IrfanView – graphic viewer

  Show EXIF/IPTC/Comment text

• blekko search engine review

• Federally-funded health centers

• FullShot Screen Capture

  "FullShot is a professional screen capture (print screen) application designed for any Windows user who needs an effortless, effective way to take screenshots of Windows screens."

• Screen Capture Elite :: Add-ons for Firefox

  "Screen Capture Elite lets you copy or save any visible, complete or selected region or a webpage and save it as a jpeg or png image file."

The rest of my favorite links are here.

EvidenceProf Blog writes about two recent cases — one from the 6th Circuit, the other from the 10th — that highlight the courts’ different treatment of private investigators and government agents. The government can keep a private investigator out of the courtroom when she’s not testifying, under Federal Rule of Evidence 615, because she’s not the “employee of a party which is not a natural person [the government] designated as its representative by its attorney”.
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Google Scholar is indexing the case law in all 50 states – Court of Appeals and Supreme Court – and the federal courts.

As with the other Google search engines, Google Scholar makes use of its own advanced search operators. Search by keywords, personal names, inclusive dates, and specify one or more states in a single search. Options on a single search are limited to 1) Search all legal opinions and journals; 2) Search only US federal court opinions or, 3) Search only court opinions from self-selected states.

Wondering which courts are included and the inclusive dates? Ask Google Scholar Help:

Which court opinions do you include?

Currently, Google Scholar allows you to search and read opinions for US state appellate and supreme court cases since 1950, US federal district, appellate, tax and bankruptcy courts since 1923 and US Supreme Court cases since 1791 (please check back periodically for updates to coverage information). In addition, it includes citations for cases cited by indexed opinions or journal articles which allows you to find influential cases (usually older or international) which are not yet online or publicly available. Legal opinions in Google Scholar are provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied on as a substitute for legal advice from a licensed lawyer. Google does not warrant that the information is complete or accurate.

View a list of search results with citations and a 2-line summary of text where some or all of the keywords appear. From here you can select to read an entire case or view case summaries that have cited the selected case.

My search query [(garbage OR trash) (curb OR curbside) +privacy], limited to California courts, 1970-2009 returned 33 cases.

The governor of Alabama signed an executive order that creates an online database of all state government spending and legislators’ relationships with lobbyists. This will go online later this year, but many other states have already made available government spending, salary and revenue databases, often in a site dedicated to issues of transparency in government.

Review the Nevada state budget by general revenue, expenditures, departments or function at Nevada Open Government. Also, lookup vendors with state contracts.

Open Georgia includes a searchable database of state employees and their salaries.

South Carolina gathers together links to their various online databases including, state expenditures and salaries.

Similar sites have been assembled by Kentucky, Rhode Island (also see, Transparency Train) and South Dakota.

Transparency rankings and states with spending online are listed at Sunshine Review.

Track transparency in government spending issues reported by independent organizations in Colorado and Illinois.

Legislation, citizen activism and current news on state government transparency can be found at the Center for Fiscal Accountability.

In the past few years, general circulation newspapers have furthered the cause of government transparency by providing searchable databases of government employees and their salaries. Although these are federal, state, county and municipal government public records the corresponding government agencies have not made these available at their Web sites. Government agency Web sites sometimes post a staff list or employee directory — not salaries — with name, telephone number and email. Often, school districts don’t list staff beyond those in the top level administration, but school sites that have their own Web pages may have a staff and faculty directory with names of administrators and teachers. An example of a very flexible school staff and teacher directory is hosted by the Ventura County Office of Education. Search by district, school or employee last name to find the district, school site, job title and phone number (Internet Explorer, only). I’ve endeavored to compile links to all of the government pay databases hosted at newspaper sites on a page called Government Pay.

The disadvantage of the separate databases is you have to know which one to search in order to verify your subject’s employment. The beta site, myDanwei, is a nascent attempt at a cross-agency compilation of government employee names, salaries, job titles and departments. Select the link,
National public employee salary database, to search by partial name, county, state, agency or institution. There’s only one search box, but you can enter a combination of keywords. The words (without quotation marks) “physician santa clara” will return a list of doctors who work for the County of Santa Clara, California. The extent of the coverage becomes apparent with various queries. The keywords “Weir Idaho” doesn’t return any records, but “Weir Washington” results in a handful of names from Washington State agencies. Just enter a state name into the search box to find out if any data is included from that location and from which government departments.

MyDanwei doesn’t identify its sources and this description of the utility isn’t very enlightening.

MyDanwei, Inc. is a pioneer of developing the next generation organization, people, salary, and job information searching and data mining platforms. We are inspired to provide our users with easy and accurate information about a person or an organization, such as salary, education background, past employments, key employees, job positions, etc. Besides one of the most comprehensive databases with millions of records of organization, people, salary, and jobs, our website also features state-of-the-art user interface, where everyone can freely add, edit, discuss, tag, and rate all records about people and organizations around the globe.

The search box on the myDanwei home page can be used to access minimal information on some private and public companies. Again, the source and completeness of the data is not identified. These are leads, not confirmations!

How does this site compare with the newspaper government employee databases?