Does the Federal Accountability Act ensure the proper use of taxpayers money and blind trust funds? The Federal Accountability (FAA) Act became law in 2006 and is not effective. This due to the Senate Scandal in 2012. Even after this scandal, no further amendments were made to the Act. Where then is the transparency in the government? Can we really trust our government with taxpayers money? Where is that money going? The largest part of this problem seems to originate from the Senate Scandal.
The number of scandals that have bypassed the Federal Accountability Act is unacceptable. The scandals have made the public lose their trust in the government. Specifically the Senate Scandal in 2012 that was brought to light. Senators Patrick Brazeau,
…show more content…
The government of Canada has promised to become fully transparent with the public by the benefits of the Federal Accountability Act. The Act states that by expanding the coverage of the Access to Information Act, the government will become more transparent and will provide Canadians with more information about the government. In 2012, Mike Duffy was getting charged for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust, but because the Act was so vague, all 31 of his charges got dropped. Bursts of outrage from the public developed when they found out that Mike Duffy was falsely claiming taxpayers money for his own and was not getting convicted. If the FAA was made more transparent regarding taxpayers money, citizens would be able to track where their money was going and the scandal would have been avoided. There is still plenty of questions that involve taxpayers money and general information about the government that the public doesn't know about, such as can we really trust our government with taxpayers money, still remains a never ending question to Canadians. Not only is there barely any transparency in the government that led to the ineffectiveness of the Federal Accountability Act but also how the government is responding to these mishaps have also led to the ineffectiveness of the
It took for the losing in the case with two Bear Stearns hedge fund managers for the government to realize that there was a problem within their justice system. If they couldn’t take down two people accused of deceiving investors, how did they assume that they would be able to take down numerous high-end executives within Wall Street? So in fall 2009, over a year after the initial hit of the financial crisis, Obama introduced the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task to oversee prosecution for fraud and financial crime a week before the hearing to discuss ’08 financial crisis prosecution. With such a department now put in place, the government believed they could go back and review the “fraud” that took place within Wall Street years before and place a blame somewhere, revealing another flaw of the US government and justice system. The government wasn’t taking the cases as serious as they should have. They weren’t finding ways to filter through Due Diligence underwriters and they weren’t calling forth whistleblowers. They were losing the case before it could even
The cons to the argument for saying the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is obsolete is discussed in the article With Wal-Mart Claims, Greater Attention on a Law by Charlie Savage. In this article Charlie Savage argues that the FCPA has always been a useful tool in stopping corruption but in recent years with companies becoming more globalized other countries gradually adopted similar laws, the United States has started to enforce it more strictly. The dollar amount of fines imposed by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission has increased even more, including a record-setting $800 million paid by Siemens in 2008. Enforcement under the act has soared, from just two enforcement actions in 2004 to 48 in 2010. There are currently at least 100 open investigations, specialists estimate.
Throughout the past several years major corporate scandals have rocked the economy and hurt investor confidence. The largest bankruptcies in history have resulted from greedy executives that “cook the books” to gain the numbers they want. These scandals typically involve complex methods for misusing or misdirecting funds, overstating revenues, understating expenses, overstating the value of assets or underreporting of liabilities, sometimes with the cooperation of officials in other corporations (Medura 1-3). In response to the increasing number of scandals the US government amended the Sarbanes Oxley act of 2002 to mitigate these problems. Sarbanes Oxley has extensive regulations that hold the CEO and top executives responsible for the numbers they report but problems still occur. To ensure proper accounting standards have been used Sarbanes Oxley also requires that public companies be audited by accounting firms (Livingstone). The problem is that the accounting firms are also public companies that also have to look after their bottom line while still remaining objective with the corporations they audit. When an accounting firm is hired the company that hired them has the power in the relationship. When the company has the power they can bully the firm into doing what they tell them to do. The accounting firm then loses its objectivity and independence making their job ineffective and not accomplishing their goal of honest accounting (Gerard). Their have been 379 convictions of fraud to date, and 3 to 6 new cases opening per month. The problem has clearly not been solved (Ulinski).
Many mass construction projects in the history of the United States have had a major impact on the economy and culture; however, not many of these have had as large as an impact as the Interstate Highway Act of 1956. The Interstate Highway Act revolutionized the way that we think about highways today. The act created an extremely easy mode of transportation for people across the country. Not only was the Interstate Highway Act extremely helpful in making rural and urban transportation for normal people, but it also helped commercial businesses in increasing sales across the country. These businesses were now able to transport their goods cheaper and faster. The Interstate Highway Act was tremendously beneficial in regards to its economic, social, and cultural significance. The legislation was significant economically in the way that it promoted business and cut travel costs, it was significant socially in the way that it allowed people to see friends and family even if they did not live close, and it was significant culturally in the way that it allowed people to move out to the country for low costs in order to live a happier life.
John Adams Wanted to sign a law into the government that was called the Alien and Sedition Acts. These acts gave the government the right to jail people for speaking against the government, or talking negatively about the United States. Along with being an immigrant from a country that supported terrorism. So if you were an immigrant who came from a terrorist approving county, the government will have the right to jail you even if you did nothing to harm or disobey the country’s laws and rights.This can only happen if the Alien and Sedition Acts were approved.
In addition, according to NBC News, the government has expansively interpreted the Patriot Act as allowing it to gather records on not just a particular person, but on millions of Americans with no suspicious actions. And it shows that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court agreed on that...
These are the words of Jesselyn Radack, a whistleblower who promoted transparency by exposing the truth to Americans. From the birth of this country, Americans have valued transparency in the government. Still, there are instances where the government is allowed to keep secrets from the American people. There has been ongoing debate on whether the American Federal government should be allowed to keep secrets from the American people. Whistleblowers are important is this debate because of their fail-safe method of creating transparency. There are three central reasons to prevent government secrecy. First, Secrecy goes against our American values. Second, Americans should have a transparent government. Third, Secrecy can harm the government and American people. To summarize, Governmental secrecy must be stopped because it is unconstitutional and undemocratic, transparency is a necessary check of the government, and governmental secrecy can lead to corruption.
Not reporting when you suspect that your client is being abused by his or her spouse (Neukrug & Milliken, 2011). As a counselor, it should be a responsibility if the counselor suspects his or her client's spouse is being abusive. According to the ACA code of ethics (2014), section B.2.a, counselors keep information confidential unless it is required to protect clients or identify others from serious harm. It is always better to make a mistake on the side of caution. What if that individual did abuse his or her spouse and something bad happened where it resulted in hospitalization or even death and the counselor knew but did nothing to prevent it. It should not only be ethical but a legal responsibility as a licensed professional to report
There are two primary roles played in the criminal justices system, adjudication and oversight. To first understand how these are two primary roles in the justice system, then a clear definition of each term is needed. Adjudication is defined as “one of the two key roles of the criminal courts; to process defendant who have been arrested by the police and formally charged with criminal offenses” (Hemmens, Brody, & Spohn, 2013). On the other hand, oversight is “an important function of courts, particularly appellate courts. The process of reviewing the decisions of lower courts and of criminal justice official to endure that proper procedures were followed and that neither laws nor constitutional provisions were violated” (Hemmens, Brody, & Spohn, 2013).
Academic integrity is defined as the moral code or ethical policy of academia. With all morals and regulations, it is easy to fall short of them sometimes. This is primarily evident in the education system. Cheating is an often broken rule of academic integrity. The struggle to maintain academic integrity throughout college students has been an ongoing battle between cheating versus honesty, habitual repeat offenders versus commitment to integrity, and collusion versus cooperation.
Individual privacy and confidentiality play a role in both research and clinical health care settings. In each instance, standards and expectations put in place by researchers and health care practitioners to follow to protect patients and research participants while interacting with them. The evolving health care system and convergence of research and treatment protocols to create learning health care systems (LHCS) are creating the need to look at patient confidentiality and privacy differently to protect them and their information.
The government has always defined their stance to support and protect the rights of American citizens. However, recent evidence has come to show that the government has abused our terms of rights and protection in the past few years, leading to the decay of the government's purpose: to serve the public. According to Katie Johnson, "this past summer, Americans learned the IRS was requesting personal information on employees, donor information, and other private data" (Johnson 1), which led to an ideal situation that illustrates this very point. As stated by Johnson, the collection of data without the owner's consent immediately infringes our many constitutional principles. Not to mention our constitution is the basis of our society. If a branch of the American government has the capability to act illegally upon the principles that protects our rights, the possibility of the federal government alone remains infinite.
Information privacy, or data privacy is the relationship between distribution of data, technology, the public expectation of privacy, and the legal and political issues surrounding them.
Data Protection is to do with you fundimental right to privacy, you may access and correct data that is about yourself. Anyone who keeps data about you has to comply with the data protection principles, there are 8 of these principles, and they are, 1. Fair obtaining, 2. Purpose specification, 3. Use and disclosure of information, 4. Security, 5. Accurate and up-to-date, 6. Adequate, relevant and not excessive, 7. Retention time, 8. Right of access. The following report is on an individuals rights and on an organisations responsibilities. It will guide you on how the rights and principles apply in different situations, like the use of CCTV or in the workplace.
Auditing is the method of finding and checking the evidence, comparing them to an established criteria, preparing the report of the audit conducted.