Quotulatiousness

May 1, 2010

Call out the inspectors

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Health, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:50

A busybody manages to create a lot of new jobs in San Diego County with one little phone call:

On Tuesday, we were surprised inspected by the San Diego County Department of Environmental Health. The two inspectors were sent out to visit our facilities (and other breweries in San Diego) as a patron had lodged a complaint about local tasting rooms. So I’d like to take a moment to thank that one person who felt it was important to lodge a complaint about brewery tasting rooms all over San Diego. Apparently they were concerned that we didn’t have a GIANT BLUE “A” on our cold boxes!

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

You see, my fellow brewers and brewery owners are now having our hands forced (in the name of public safety) to go through the plan check and approval phase so that all of us can earn Health Permits for our tasting rooms.

What’s even better and the reason we’re all so thankful for your efforts today is that Port Brewing and The Lost Abbey has been issued a cease and desist for the sampling of beer in our tasting room. Because, as we all know, beer is a public nuisance laced with nasty things that can kill you!

I personally want to extend my gratitude to that consumer who felt this industry needed more regulatory agencies knocking on our doors. (The Health Department has never been interested in us before this call) Muchas Gracias Amigo (or Amiga) wherever you might be. There are breweries all over the City of San Diego who are now going to have to spend thousands of dollars on repairs that at best are “marginally justified.”

What follows is a long list of local businesses that will be seeing more income from San Diego breweries, as they all scramble to get into compliance with regulations they didn’t have to worry about until now. Before you consider this is a good thing, make sure you read up on the broken window fallacy (scroll down to paragraph 1.6).

April 27, 2010

Further evidence that PowerPoint is the tool of Satan

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Humour, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 17:09

DarkWater Muse sent me the following link, saying “Finally somebody who sympathizes with my long held views on PowerPoint”:

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was shown a PowerPoint slide in Kabul last summer that was meant to portray the complexity of American military strategy, but looked more like a bowl of spaghetti.

“When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war,” General McChrystal dryly remarked, one of his advisers recalled, as the room erupted in laughter.

[. . .]

“PowerPoint makes us stupid,” Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander, said this month at a military conference in North Carolina. (He spoke without PowerPoint.) Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster, who banned PowerPoint presentations when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005, followed up at the same conference by likening PowerPoint to an internal threat.

“It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control,” General McMaster said in a telephone interview afterward. “Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.

[. . .]

Senior officers say the program does come in handy when the goal is not imparting information, as in briefings for reporters.

The news media sessions often last 25 minutes, with 5 minutes left at the end for questions from anyone still awake. Those types of PowerPoint presentations, Dr. Hammes said, are known as “hypnotizing chickens.”

One of the worst aspects of any PowerPoint presentation is that by the use of graphic tricks and pretty effects, serious flaws in actual content can be “handwaved over”. This is great for the presenter who doesn’t want to impart real information, but terrible for the victims audience. Bulleted lists are a useful device for summarizing key ideas that don’t necessarily have a hard sequence or hierarchy, but they can also be used to imply illogical or inconsistent groupings of concepts or facts, especially when the eye (and the mind) is being entranced by whizzy tricks.

To paraphrase Sir Humphrey Appleby, “a good Civil Servant must be able to use PowerPoint not as a window into the mind but as a curtain to draw across it.”

I’ve sounded the warning call about the evil incarnate that is PowerPoint before. Do have a look at the (yes, I recognize the irony) slideshow here.

Update, 30 April: PowerPoint badges for your BDUs.

April 20, 2010

If this doesn’t anger you, there’s something wrong with you

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:19

Kate Kendell looks at how California’s inhumane and paternalistic Sonoma County government “legally” did horrible things to an elderly gay couple:

One evening, Harold fell down the front steps of their home and was taken to the hospital. Based on their medical directives alone, Clay should have been consulted in Harold’s care from the first moment. Tragically, county and health care workers instead refused to allow Clay to see Harold in the hospital. The county then ultimately went one step further by isolating the couple from each other, placing the men in separate nursing homes.

Ignoring Clay’s significant role in Harold’s life, the county continued to treat Harold like he had no family and went to court seeking the power to make financial decisions on his behalf. Outrageously, the county represented to the judge that Clay was merely Harold’s “roommate.” The court denied their efforts, but did grant the county limited access to one of Harold’s bank accounts to pay for his care.

What happened next is even more chilling.

These men had been married (legally or not) for twenty years, yet the bureaucratic solons of Sonoma County deliberately separated them, stole their joint property, and effectively incarcerated them both in different nursing homes.

The surviving partner has launched a legal action, and I hope his case is decided properly — and that the county and its employees are properly punished for their actions:

With the help of a dedicated and persistent court-appointed attorney, Anne Dennis of Santa Rosa, Clay was finally released from the nursing home. Ms. Dennis, along with Stephen O’Neill and Margaret Flynn of Tarkington, O’Neill, Barrack & Chong, now represent Clay in a lawsuit against the county, the auction company, and the nursing home, with technical assistance from NCLR. A trial date has been set for July 16, 2010 in the Superior Court for the County of Sonoma.

Update, 22 April: According to Radley Balko, Sonoma County has (finally) responded to the report, claiming that the injuries to Harold Scull were actually a result of domestic abuse:

The county says Scull filed a report to that effect, and that the abuse was documented by hospital workers. But the letter adds that no criminal charges were filed against Greene.

I’m not sure what to make of that. I’m not familiar with California law on the matter, but while a report of domestic abuse may be enough to keep Greene from visiting Scull in the hospital (and for that to be a sensible decision), without criminal charges, I don’t know how it allows the county to forcibly intern Greene in a nursing home and auction off all of his belongings. Then again, if the initial lawsuit neglected to mention the domestic abuse report, it’s possible that it also overstated or misstated the county’s actions with respect to Greene’s property and nursing home stay.

April 15, 2010

“Wolf! Wolf! Wolf! Oh, never mind . . .”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Health, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:04

Marni Soupcoff points out that the World Health Organization should have been far more forthcoming after their intial “the sky is falling” announcements caused panic last year over H1N1:

Admit your mistakes before others exaggerate them. That’s the oft-quoted wry advice of writer and retired surgeon Dr. Andrew V. Mason. Perhaps the World Health Organization (WHO) was trying to follow it this week by convening a three-day meeting of outside experts to review the organization’s handling of the recent swine flu outbreak. The problem is, despite claiming to want to know what went wrong as much as what went right, the WHO seems unwilling to even entertain the possibility that it created a counterproductive panic by labelling H1N1 a pandemic of the highest order (“level 6”).

Swine flu, as you’ve probably realized by now, has turned out to be a mild, not particularly deadly virus — it’s certainly far less deadly than the regular seasonal flu that most of us consider a mundane part of everyday life. If one were feeling charitable toward the WHO, one could point out that it didn’t know back in the spring of last year — when it shouted “level 6!” from the rooftops — that H1N1 would prove to be such a relatively innocuous bug. But it’s precisely because it didn’t know that the WHO should have been more cautious with its labelling. You don’t shout “fire” in a crowded theatre just because it smells like the popcorn might be a little on the burnt side. It’s not worth the chaos and alarm you might cause. (Or in this case, the run on vaccines and the resorting to quacks and sketchy “home” remedies.)

Between the unrestrained use of the term “pandemic” and the noted ability of the mass media to hype real and imagined risks, it’s almost surprising we didn’t have doomsday-style cults spring up over H1N1.

April 2, 2010

QotD: The KGBO, er, I mean LCBO

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Law, Quotations, Wine — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:03

Because we live under a monopoly regime that has no intention of loosening restrictive laws, we will never see “wine bar/stores” like this. Americans are jaded to these luxuries of free market access to wine and loads of selection. You read magazines where they tell you to talk with your retailer about finding the best wines from out of theway places and dedicated small producers, and the knowledgeable Ontarian’s reaction is “Yeah, right not in my lifetime will I see that.” While in the U.S. the ‘little guy’ whose passion for wine you can feel the moment you walk in the door and engage in a “which wine should I get” conversation. A recent discussion with an ex-pat American wine collector and drinker (just recently moved north of the 49th parallel) elicited disgust about the LCBO and its selection. “I’m from Chicago,” he tells me, “and I can’t find a decent bottle of wine up here and the selection is . . .” he trails off and shakes his head. Ontarians are used to it. We’ve grown up with Big Brother’s iron fist clamped firmly around our throat and his sweaty palm covering our eyes to what the world outside our borders is doing with booze (wine in particular).

I usually urge you to take a trip to wine country, but this year I want you to take a trip abroad, not to a wine country or region, but to a U.S. wine retailer or specialty shop, a grocery store will do in a pinch (yes I did say a grocery store). Check out, not only the selection but the price, what’s on sale and for how much, wines for under $4, 2 for 1, 3 for 1 or sometimes more for one low price. Discounts for multiple purchases, sale prices that actually seem like you are saving money and not just a dollar or two off. Pay attention to what you see, then ask yourself, “why don’t we have that here in Ontario?” You know the answer, it stares at you with big white letters on a big green background and they go by a four-letter acronym (do I really have to spell it out?) How about this, their first letters are L.C., although they should be K.G. If you are any kind of oenophile, be it novice or pro, you’ll realize that a trip across the border is enthralling and liberating — but then it’s back to the oppressive world of Ontario with Big Brother’s hands shielding you and stopping you and then you tell me honestly, which system would you like to live under?

Michael Pinkus, “Is it a Shop or is it a Bar? Whichever it is, I want one here”, Ontario Wine Review, 2010-04-01

March 31, 2010

More on the growth in public sector employment

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Economics, Education, Government, Politics, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:11

More on this topic here, here, here, here, and here.

March 30, 2010

Nanny state now working entrapment angle

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Law — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:04

They may be able to get methamphetamines with their breakfast cereal, but the nanny state is determined to ensure that they can’t buy goldfish:

Buying a goldfish at a pet shop used to be an innocent childhood pleasure.

But today an elderly pet shop owner told how she was entrapped into selling a goldfish to a 14-year-old schoolboy, then warned she could face jail.

She had breached a law introduced in 2006 which bans selling live fish to anyone under 16.

After a prosecution estimated to have cost taxpayers £20,0000, Joan Higgins, 66, a great-grandmother who has never been in trouble before, has been forced to wear a tag on her ankle like common criminal and given a seven-week curfew.

Her son, Mark, 47 was also handed a fine and ordered to carry out 120 hours unpaid work in the community.

The notorious criminals could face jail time if they’re brought up on similar charges in the future. The courts are doing everything they can to communicate the extreme seriousness of these crimes, and will stop at nothing to stamp out the evil goldfish sellers.

Apparently, the crime syndicate has been in operation for 28 years, concealing their evil, predatory behaviour behind such innocent-seeming activities as volunteering for PDSA (Peoples Dispensary for Sick Animals) and contributing food for the animals. The hardened criminal mastermind has been banned from contact with at-risk individuals like her own great-grandchildren and prevented from attending known criminal hang-outs like bingo halls and Rod Stewart concerts.

H/T to Kathy Shaidle for the link.

March 26, 2010

The case against Jamie Oliver

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Education, Food, Health, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 15:59

March 22, 2010

After MPAC?

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Economics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:51

Lorne Cutler looks at one of the proposals to replace the Municipal Property Tax Corporation (MPAC), which sets the property tax levels for Ontario towns and cities:

As the Ontario government grapples with ways of cutting their $25-billion deficit, they should note that there is one agency that that could be virtually eliminated overnight and few would shed a tear. It is the vast Orwellian bureaucracy known as the Municipal Property Tax Corporation (MPAC), which has the role of determining the value of Ontarians’ property every four years so that municipal taxes can either increase or decrease depending on how MPAC’s valuation of the property has changed relative to other properties in your municipality.

If MPAC determines that a property’s value went up less than the average for the community, the municipal taxes will drop (before any tax increases implemented by the municipality) and if the property went up more than the average, the taxes will increase. It is a capital gains tax without the capital gains!

Not content to actually use the market to determine property values, every few years, MPAC’s army of 1,500 civil servants assesses what they think each property is worth. Even if you just bought your house last year, MPAC can decide you really didn’t pay the true value. In order to determine the value of over 4 million properties and fight assessment challenges, the agency spent over $180-million in 2008, an 11% increase from 2007. This cost doesn’t even include the millions in subsidies that the government has to provide to seniors so they don’t lose their homes because of rising property taxes due to MPAC.

Elizabeth and I had our day in “court” with MPAC back in 2004, when we were handed an assessment claiming that our house was worth (for tax purposes) 25% more than we paid for it — in the same month we took it over from the builder:

Now it was our turn, and we already knew that our ace had been trumped: we couldn’t use the builder’s sale price as part of our evidence. We tried anyway, and to our astonishment, it was allowed. In fact, we seem to have unwittingly wrong-footed the representative from MPAC, because we mentioned that we’d received two separate assessment notices for different values (the first was about 5% more than we’d paid, the second nearly 25% more).

Because we’re in a pretty fast-moving market area, we could certainly believe that the house would be worth 5% more within a couple of months of buying it, but 25%? Come on. There was no way that we could have sold the house for 125% of list price that quickly. After a few years, sure, that’d be possible, but not that soon.

We were treated to a long-ish lecture about how our builder had owned the land for such a long time that they weren’t selling the houses for what they would really be worth on the open market, because they didn’t need to make a profit on the land . . . or something equally economically unlikely. I rather lost the thread at that point. Anyway, during our respective summations, it became clear that he didn’t think we had a leg to stand on (he wasn’t openly gloating, but it was edging in that direction).

The final act was a bit of a Scrooge-to-Bob-Cratchit moment, as the adjudicator turned to us and said “. . . and in summary, I will be lowering your assessment to $XXX,XXX” — about 5% less than the lowest assessment figure we’d got. I was so sure that I’d misheard him that it was only as the MPAC rep started whining that I believed what I’d heard. The observer from the town suddenly went into a huddle with the MPAC guy, because the lowered assessment for us might have a domino effect in our entire subdivision.

March 15, 2010

PSAC president says public servants not paid as well as private sector workers

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:55

In direct opposition to common belief, John Gordon of the Public Service Alliance of Canada says that civil servants are worse-paid than private sector workers:

“Here we are again,” says John Gordon, the president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada that represents 165,000 workers.

“Every time the government gets into [trouble] they kind of ramp up the rhetoric and the Canadian public starts to believe them . . .” he said.

In general terms, he added, his members’ wages run behind those in comparable positions in the private sector.

His workers are an easy target, he said, because the government fails to explain what it means to get rid of public servants — that services provided to the public would be affected.

For example, Mr. Gordon points to the work done by federal public servants during the H1N1 crisis to get vaccines in place and deal with the pandemic.

“It’s easy to broad brush it and say they should be freezing wages, which they have already done and cutting public services, which they are already doing . . .” he said, but added that the public has to ask itself what services it would like to see gone.

You see, unlike in the bloated private sector, where jobs are for life, and pensions are awesome, civil servants are overworked and underpaid. Any hint of reducing the costs of the civil service will automatically produce the most painful cuts for the public — that’s how the game is played. Even a freeze would somehow, through the arcane alchemy of public service financing, result in cuts only in the services most visible to the public.

Update, 16 March: An interesting sidelight to this is reported in Hit and Run:

California citizens are now encountering “state and local government officials [who are] increasingly . . . blaming budget cuts and furloughs when they withhold or delay the release of information requested under the state Public Records Act.”

March 13, 2010

Privatization? Let’s not be ideological!

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Economics, Government — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:03

Robert Fulford on the problems with unions in the public service:

Unions hate the very word “privatization.” And no wonder. Their present system is close to perfect: Their workers can’t be fired but can strike, as they do from time to time, demonstrating their power. They win most of their struggles with politicians, who throw billions at them just to keep them quiet. (After all, it’s not as if the politicians were spending their own money.)

This arrangement became commonplace in Canada about half a century ago, turning public-sector employees into princes of the working class who make more money than other people doing the same jobs, and receive more generous benefits.

Union members passionately believe this is no more than their due. The unions and their friends believe public ownership is fundamentally good, private ownership at best dubious. In 1994, when it seemed possible that Ontario would privatize liquor sales, the Ontario Liquor Boards Employees’ Union commissioned a study by a York University economist, Nuri Jazairi. He found, no surprise, that this was a bad idea and that the provincial government should continue to control every ounce of liquor sold within provincial boundaries, presumably for eternity.

But his report was most revealing when he turned to the motives of those who favour privatization. He suggested the idea sprang from “purely political and ideological reasons,” among which he listed “the control of public expenditures” and “limiting the role of government in managing the economy.”

It’s no surprise that the folks who benefit disproportionally from the current arrangement are the most vocally opposed to any changes which would reduce their advantages. If the government did get enough political will to go ahead and privatize, there’s no way (unless the government tied their hands in advance) that private enterprise would give — or could afford to give — their employees the same pay and benefits they currently enjoy under public ownership.

Update: Speaking of situations which could only arise under public ownership, here’s a perfect example:

More than 1,250 Ontario Ministry of Revenue employees will soon be receiving severance packages of up to $45,000 each — but they won’t be out of work. Most of them aren’t even switching desks. They’re simply being transferred from the provincial payroll to the federal payroll when the province moves to a federal harmonized sales tax this summer.

March 11, 2010

Food follies: the pinNaCle of idiocy?

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Food, Health, Law — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:15

The food police are after your salt:

Some New York City chefs and restaurant owners are taking aim at a bill introduced in the New York Legislature that, if passed, would ban the use of salt in restaurant cooking.

“No owner or operator of a restaurant in this state shall use salt in any form in the preparation of any food for consumption by customers of such restaurant, including food prepared to be consumed on the premises of such restaurant or off of such premises,” the bill, A. 10129, states in part.

The legislation, which Assemblyman Felix Ortiz, D-Brooklyn, introduced on March 5, would fine restaurants $1,000 for each violation.

I can only assume that Rep. Ortiz has no tastebuds, as the diet he’s prescribing would be bland, bland, bland. There’s also little chance that it’ll be passed into law, but you can consider it a shot across the bows of the restaurant trade . . . or a ranging round for the next salvo.

News bulletin: school still sucks

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Education, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:01

Things aren’t improving in schools, as this report from James Stephenson makes clear:

I remember the day they installed the cameras in my high school. Everyone was surprised when we walked and saw them hanging ominously from the ceiling.

Everyone except me: I moved to rural Virginia from the wealthier and more heavily populated region of northern Virginia. Cameras have watched me since middle school. So I wasn’t surprised, just disappointed. “What have we done?” asked one of my friends. It felt like the faculty was punishing us for something. A common justification for cameras is that they make students safer, and make them feel more secure. I can tell you from first hand experience that that argument is bullshit. Columbine had cameras, but they didn’t make the 15 people who died there any safer. Cameras don’t make you feel more secure; they make you feel twitchy and paranoid. Some people say that the only people who don’t like school cameras are the people that have something to hide. But having the cameras is a constant reminder that the school does not trust you and that the school is worried your fellow classmates might go on some sort of killing rampage.

Cameras aren’t the worst of the privacy violations. Staff perform random searches of cars and lockers. Most of the kids know about locker searches because they see the administration going though their stuff in the hall. But not everyone knows about the car searches, all the way out in the parking lot where administrators aren’t likely to be observed. (People don’t often bother to lock their cars, either).

In a world where everyone seems to be desperately worried about dangers to kids, the one thing that’s overlooked is the almost complete loss of human rights: being a student in the public school system means you don’t have many rights at all. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that prisoners in jail have more rights — and better-protected rights — than children and teenagers in school.

Petty acts of rebellion–and innocent little covert activities–kept our spirits up. The school’s computer network may have been censored, but the sneakernet is alive and well. Just like in times past, high school students don’t have much money to buy music, movies or games, but all are avidly traded at every American high school. It used to be tapes; now it’s thumbdrives and flash disks. My friends and I once started an underground leaflet campaign that was a lot of fun. I even read about a girl who ran a library of banned books out of her locker. These trivial things are more important than they seem because they make students feel like they have some measure of control over their lives. Schools today are not training students to be good citizens: they are training students to be obedient.

Of course, obedience must be enforced.

March 10, 2010

Police funding: Toronto increases budget, reduces staffing

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:07

Toronto’s police force is going to have to cut back on the number of officers on the beat, in spite of a $33 million budget increase since last year:

At an emergency meeting at police headquarters, the board voted to find temporary savings, which would bring spending down to the $888.1-million approved by the city in February, avoiding a clash over a $5.9-million disparity.

Police Chief Bill Blair said even temporary budget reductions would mean fewer officers on staff, and concerns about a reduction in the force’s effectiveness.

“At the end of the day, this is what you need to fund these service levels. The city doesn’t want to come back and say, ‘cut police officers,’ because politically, that is a difficult thing to suggest,” Chief Blair said. “But what they instead say is, ‘We won’t give you enough money to pay their salaries.’ So inevitably we have to cut the number of police officers.”

Last year’s budget was $854.8 million. So an increase to “only” $888.1 million means automatic cutbacks to staffing levels. That must make sense to someone, but it seems like only in the public sector can an increase in funding go hand-in-hand with a decrease in provided services.

California launches yet another attempt to tax out-of-state corporations

Filed under: Books, Bureaucracy, Economics, Government, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:28

California is getting desperate to scrape up every penny it can, so a renewed proposal for a tax grab vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger last year is back in play:

The online retail giant [Amazon.com] has enjoyed an edge over many competitors in the state because it is not required to collect sales tax from residents who buy books, top-of-the-line plasma televisions, cases of diapers and thousands of other products from its website. The Seattle corporation has no store, warehouse, office building or other physical presence in California, and the state cannot tax such businesses under a 1992 Supreme Court decision.

Consumers here are required to pay sales tax on the goods they purchase at Amazon but almost never do, because the state has no mechanism for tracking Amazon purchases and collecting the money.

No story is complete without a nasty accusation:

The Democrats who control California’s Legislature plan to put their own bid on the governor’s desk this month in hopes of reaping up to $150 million annually for state and local coffers. The revenue would make only a tiny dent in the state’s $20-billion deficit, but supporters say every dollar counts in tight times, and there’s a principle at stake.

Amazon has “built an entire business model based on tax avoidance,” said Assembly tax committee Chairman Charles Calderon (D-Montebello).

Of course, tax avoidance is perfectly legal . . . he’s trying to smear Amazon (and every other business selling to customers in California) as being tax evaders. Avoidance is not only legal, it’s a sensible strategy to minimize costs and gain a competitive advantage. Tax evasion, on the other hand, is illegal.

So who is going to get hurt if the measure passes — other than Californians who have been remiss in declaring and remitting their sales taxes?

The California proposal seizes on the thousands of online sales affiliates that Amazon contracts with to get customers to its site. Those companies advertise Amazon products, provide links to the company’s website and get a percentage of the resulting sales.

Many of the affiliates are in California. Supporters of the Democrats’ bill, ABX8 8, say that the connections amount to a presence for Amazon as well and that California should be able to force the firm to collect sales tax.

H/T to Clive, who became aware of this through a website he visits regularly which may have to close down due to the proposed law.

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