Quotulatiousness

February 4, 2010

Unemployment insurance systems can deter hiring

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 07:31

Jay Goltz discusses how some state-level unemployment insurance systems actually deter firms from hiring new employees:

The unemployment insurance tax may be the most confusing and misunderstood tax there is. It is run by the states, and the rules can vary as much as the weather from one state to another.

Here’s how it works in Illinois. The important point for business owners to know is that when the state pays out claims to a company’s former employees, that company’s unemployment tax rate goes up. For each business, the state calculates how many dollars have been paid in compensation over the previous three years and adds on about 48 percent through various calculations. The result is that in Illinois, you end up paying for incremental compensation claims at a rate of $1.48 for every dollar that a former employee collects.

If you lay off or fire someone without “cause,” that person is eligible for unemployment compensation. “Cause” means that the employee violated a company policy, like coming in late or threatening a co-worker. “Cause” does not include doing a bad job, being very slow, or having a bad attitude.

I’d always assumed that the Canadian system (which is run by the federal government) was more generous than the various state-level systems in the US, but there appears to be more variation state-to-state so that may not be true. Certainly the Illinois system’s top payment of $531 per week is well above the Canadian EI top payment ($457 before taxes, according to the servicecanada.gc.ca website). If the Illinois amount is after tax, that’s significantly more than a Canadian claimant would get.

January 29, 2010

Australia’s film censors got bored, so decided to call attention to themselves

Filed under: Australia, Bureaucracy, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 19:12

At least, that’s a sensible an interpretation as I can come up with for this lovely little policy change:

A reader writes, “Australian Classification Board (ACB) is now banning depictions of small-breasted women in adult publications and films. They banned mainstream pornography from showing women with A-cup breasts, apparently on the grounds that they encourage paedophilia, and in spite of the fact this is a normal breast size for many adult women. Presumably small breasted women taking photographs of themselves will now be guilty of creating simulated child pornography, to say nothing of the message this sends to women with modestly sized chests or those who favour them. Australia has also banned pornographic depictions of female ejaculation, a normal orgasmic sexual response in many women, with censors branding it as ‘abhorrent.'”

Hard to come up with a sensible explanation for this, you have to admit.

January 20, 2010

This has got to be a mis-communication

Filed under: Americas, Bureaucracy, Military, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 21:55

At least, I hope it’s just a miscommunication:

Food handouts were shut off Tuesday to thousands of people at a tent city here when the main U.S. aid agency said the Army should not be distributing the packages.

It was not known whether the action reflected a high-level policy decision at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) or confusion in a city where dozens of entities are involved in aid efforts.

“We are not supposed to get rations unless approved by AID,” Maj. Larry Jordan said.

Jordan said that approval was revoked; water was not included in the USAID decision, so the troops continued to hand out bottles of water. The State Department and USAID did not respond to requests for comment.

Surely not even the most pig-headed rules-lawyer would have required this . . . I hope.

H/T Castle Argghhh.

Update, 21 January: For reasons of incompetence, I forgot to actually include the URL in that link to Castle Argghhh. Fixed now.

While I’m updating the post, this may be relevant:

The MRE (Meals Ready to Eat, in a pouch) are frequently used as emergency rations. The MRE has evolved from its initial introduction in 1983 (12 separate entrees) to today (24 menu entrees). The MREs change from year to year, and new entrees are added in place of others. The U.S. military has generally switched out entrees each year (apparently the notion that such a deal is a zero-sum game seems to persist, as opposed to just adding new ones). This constant evolution has done much to diminish the bad reputations MREs had early on. Back then, the MRE (officially, “Meals, Ready to Eat”) was often called “Meals Rejected by Everyone”.

The United States also has other rations, including variants for cold weather (which has a higher calorie count than the regular MRE – 1540 per meal compared to 1250 for an MRE), and a kosher/halal variant for Jewish and Moslem soldiers (both religions, for instance, forbid the consumption of pork). Vegetarian entrees are provided, as well. The United States also has developed the Humanitarian Daily Ration (HDR), which has three meals and is based on vegetarian entrees to provide a low chance of offending cultural sensibilities. Many of these HDRs were dropped over Afghanistan in late 2001. Several hundred thousand HDRs are stockpiled for disaster relief, and production can be ramped up quickly. MREs and HDRs are particularly attractive because they provide uncontaminated food that does not require refrigeration, in a compact package. The UN, and many other food aid organizations, use the HDR for situations like Haiti.

January 11, 2010

Dystopia, here we come!

Filed under: Environment, Government, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:06

The State of the World 2010 report published by the Worldwatch Institute will find a large audience among the postlapsarian Left:

Ditch the dog; throw away (sorry, recycle) those takeaway menus; bin bottled water; get rid of that gas-guzzling car and forget flying to far-flung places. These are just some of the sacrifices we in the West will need to make if we are to survive climate change.

The stark warning comes from the renowned Worldwatch Institute, a Washington-based organisation regarded as the world’s pre-eminent environmental think tank.

[. . .]

“Habits that are firmly set – from where people live to what they eat — will all need to be altered and in many cases simplified or minimised… From Earth’s perspective, the American or even the European way of life is simply not viable.”

Of course, to enforce this new “way of life”, we’ll also have to give up our quaint, out-dated notions of liberty, civil rights, democracy, representative government and other relics of the Enlightenment. To save humanity, we’ll have to give up individuality: there’s no other way to eliminate the “wasteful” American or European lifestyle without massive employment of force. You can almost hear the hearts-a-flutter among the ranks of those who want to run your life for you (assuming you’re considered valuable enough to keep alive, of course . . . to save the human race, individual lives can’t be spared, comrade).

First to go would be the tourism industry: can’t have all those passenger jets flying to and fro, spewing all that evil carbon dioxide into the air. But don’t plan on driving anywhere . . . personal vehicles will be next. Mass transit will be the only allowable transportation. What’s that, comrade? Don’t live near a transit line? Get used to walking.

Oh, and better bone up on subsistence farming . . . that’s also in the blueprint. You’ll be expected to grow your own food as part of living the new “sustainable” lifestyle, along with only using “completely recyclable” goods.

Our would-be rulers appear not to have observed what happened the last time someone implemented this sort of radical policy. Or perhaps they have . . .

January 9, 2010

QotD: The awfulness of airports

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:02

Over the weekend, an idiot walked the wrong way through a secure exit for arriving passengers at Newark airport. An entire terminal was shut down so that everybody on the “sterile” side of the security barriers could be herded back out and rescreened. The entire process took just under seven hours. The cascading delays disrupted air travel worldwide. They didn’t even catch the doofus who caused the ruckus. No doubt, if they’d announced his location over the paging system, he’d have been drawn and quartered by a mob of traveling salesmen from 3M and a gaggle of middle-school girls returning from a volleyball tournament.

Now, I should back up. When I referred to the “sterile” side of the security barrier, I was using the term narrowly, to refer to folks who’d been through the metal detectors. Because to use the word “sterile” in its usual context in a sentence with “airports” — those belching Petri dishes of bathroom effluence and unidentifiable noisome miasma — would be a grotesque abrogation of journalistic trust.

According to the latest epidemiological research, airports reside somewhere between no-frills Haitian brothels and Penn State fraternity bathrooms when it comes to hygiene. USA Today recently surveyed the health-inspection records of airport restaurants and found that serious code violations were as commonplace as rat and mouse droppings; 77 percent of 35 restaurants reviewed at Reagan National Airport had at least one major violation.

I could go on, of course. The petty humiliations, the routine deceptions from airline employees desperate to rid themselves of troublesome travelers (“Oh, they can definitely help you at the gate!”), the stress-position seats, the ever-changing rules for what can and cannot be in your carry-on, being charged for food that the Red Cross would condemn if it were served at Gitmo: Air travel is the most expensive unpleasant experience in everyday life outside the realm of words ending in -oscopy.

Jonah Goldberg, “A No-Fly List? Count Me In: Flying before 9/11 was already awful, and it has only become worse”, National Review, 2010-01-08

January 4, 2010

Ohio moves to protect wine drinkers from themselves

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Law, USA, Wine — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:10

Ah, those Ohio wine drinkers . . . they must be consuming wine at much higher than the national average. How else can you account for the state government legally imposing limits on how much wine you can buy each year?

As laws go, Ohio’s limit on wine purchases appears to be simple:

“No family household shall purchase more than 24 cases of 12 bottles of 750 milliliters of wine in one year.”

That’s 288 bottles per year — plenty for most people. But it raises questions if you’re a collector, entertain a lot or just prickle at the thought of another government regulation.

How do they know how much wine I buy? Why do they care? How many cases have I purchased this year?

Of course, the limit isn’t really a limit: there’s no mechanism to track your actual purchases from retailers, Ohio drinkers, it’s only to limit sales direct from wineries to consumers. This limit was introduced after the US Supreme Court decision a few years back which struck down state-level restrictions on shipments from out-of-state wineries.

In several ways, it’s a typical bureaucratic response to a non-issue, providing work for several new civil servants, requiring uncompensated form-filling and legal compliance on the part of the sellers (over and above the normal requirements for selling alcohol), and being remarkably ineffective, to boot:

All wineries or importers for wineries that produce fewer than 250,000 gallons per year pay the state $25 for a license that allows them to ship directly to customers here. They have to pay the state’s alcohol and sales taxes. They also have to tell the state who received the wine — and how much that person got.

The Ohio Division of Liquor Control, which receives the reports on wine sales from the S permit holders, uses the reports to determine whether someone might be violating the purchase limit, said Matt Mullins, a spokesman for the division. “It’s the division’s interpretation that it’s related to the amount of wine shipped from an S permit holder. That’s what we believe the intent (of the law) was.”

The reports are due each year in March, he said, and the first came last year. No one was flagged as a violator.

If the reports did show that someone had purchased too much wine by mail, Mullins said, the information would be turned over to the Ohio Department of Public Safety Investigative Unit, which enforces state alcohol laws. The law allows a fine of up to $100 if someone is found guilty.

I’m not at all in favour of this sort of legalistic bullshit, but if they’re going to go to the effort of setting up this system, it’s farcical to — a year or more after the fact — track down a “perpetrator” and then fine them “up to $100”. A hundred bucks wouldn’t pay the state for the time and effort to track down that criminal mastermind who legally ordered an extra case of wine . . .

Of course, the statist’s response would be to substantially increase the fines, rather than dismantle the whole ridiculous tracking system.

December 30, 2009

If the terrorists don’t kill off the airlines, the TSA will

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:54

Radley Balko joins the chorus of protests about the latest set of how-stupid-can-you-get “security” rules from the TSA:

Seems to me that what this, Flight 93, and the Richard Reid incident have shown us is that the best line of defense against airplane-based terrorism is us. Alert, aware, informed passengers.

TSA, on the other hand, equates hassle with safety. For all the crap they put us through, this guy still got some sort of explosive material on the plane from Amsterdam. He was stopped by law-abiding passengers. So TSA responds to all of this by . . . announcing plans to hassle law-abiding U.S. passengers even more.

If you’re really cynical, you could make a good argument that they’re really only interested in the appearance of safety. They’ve simply concluded that the more difficult they make your flight, the safer you’ll feel. Never mind if any of the theatrics actually work.

After my last business flight (the day of the Shoe Bomber’s transatlantic aircraft attempt), I’ve actively avoided commercial air travel. This latest set of Security Theatre set dressings merely extends the range I’ll be willing to drive rather than putting up with the flight — actually, the flight preparation, rather than the flight itself.

Update: Don’t know why I thought it was the Shoe Bomber . . . it was the would-be liquid bomb conspiracy that happened while I was in transit through Atlanta.

December 29, 2009

Air security gone insane

Filed under: Bureaucracy, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:58

Hard to disagree with Gulliver on this one:

In the wake of Friday’s attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, the people who run America’s airport security apparatus appear to have gone insane. Despite statements from several officials, including Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, that there is “no indication” of any broader plot against American airliners, some truly absurd security “precautions” are being implemented on US-bound flights worldwide.

The most ridiculous new rule prohibits passengers on US-bound international flights from leaving their seats or having anything on their laps—even a laptop or a pillow—during the final hour of flight. You’re probably thinking “Wait, what?” Indeed. The New York Times elaborates:

In effect, the restrictions mean that passengers on flights of 90 minutes or less would most likely not be able to leave their seats at all, since airlines do not allow passengers to walk around the cabin while a plane is climbing to its cruising altitude.

Gulliver looks forward to the barrage of lawsuits from the first people who are forced to use the bathroom in their airplane seats. This is the absolute worst sort of security theatre: inconvenient, absurd, and, crucially, ineffective.

December 22, 2009

Anglicans now allowed to shoplift

Filed under: Britain, Law, Religion — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:11

There’s updating your church to appeal to modern attitudes, and then there’s this:

Thou shall steal after all! Holy row greets fatherly advice from York vicar
Church of England priest Tim Jones preaches it’s OK to shoplift, though it’s best from a big retail company not family business

In issuing the 10 commandments to Moses atop Mount Sinai, God was pretty unequivocal: “Thou shalt not steal.”

However, there’s good news for anyone whose passion for pilfering has hitherto been tempered by the eighth commandment: according to one Church of England vicar, we can steal after all.

Father Tim Jones, the parish priest of St Lawrence and St Hilda in York, told his congregation on Sunday that certain vulnerable people face difficult situations.

“My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift,” he said. “I do not offer such advice because I think that stealing is a good thing, or because I think it is harmless, for it is neither.”

Well, that pretty much seals it, doesn’t it? Any other commandments we can dispense with — with the blessings of the Church of England?

December 18, 2009

The lesson is . . . next time, don’t turn it in

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Law — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 13:06

Remember the report of a man who’d found a shotgun on his lawn, turned it in to the police, and was promptly charged with posession of an illegal weapon? Well, he’s been convicted and will face up toa minimum of five years in prison for his “crime”:

A former soldier who handed a discarded shotgun in to police faces at least five years imprisonment for “doing his duty”.

Paul Clarke, 27, was found guilty of possessing a firearm at Guildford Crown Court on Tuesday — after finding the gun and handing it personally to police officers on March 20 this year.

The jury took 20 minutes to make its conviction, and Mr Clarke now faces a minimum of five year’s imprisonment for handing in the weapon.

In a statement read out in court, Mr Clarke said: “I didn’t think for one moment I would be arrested.

“I thought it was my duty to hand it in and get it off the streets.”

The way the law is written, the jury would have had no choice but to find him guilty. If only there were some way for a jury to find that the law was at fault. (Or, among their other limits to civil liberties, has the British government made jury nullification illegal?)

Update: Fixed the mis-statement about the length of sentence Mr. Clarke may face.

December 15, 2009

Heart-warming story of the day

Filed under: Britain, Law — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:52

Jon sent me this heart-warming story, and I thought it best to share:

A millionaire businessman who fought back against a knife-wielding burglar was jailed for two-and-a-half years yesterday. But his attacker has been spared prison.

Munir Hussain, 53, and his family were tied up and told to lie on the floor by career criminal Waled Salem, who burst into his home with two other masked men.

Mr Hussain escaped and attacked Salem with a metal pole and a cricket bat. But yesterday it was the businessman who was starting a prison sentence for his ‘very violent revenge’.

Jailing him, Judge John Reddihough said some members of the public would think that 56-year-old Salem ‘deserved what happened to him’ and that Mr Hussain ‘should not have been prosecuted’.

But had he spared Mr Hussain jail, the judge said, the ‘rule of law’ would collapse.

He said: ‘If persons were permitted to take the law into their own hands and inflict their own instant and violent punishment on an apprehended offender rather than letting the criminal justice system take its course, then the rule of law and our system of criminal justice, which are hallmarks of a civilised society, would collapse.’

Salem, who has previous convictions, has already been given a non-custodial sentence despite carrying out what the judge called a ‘serious and wicked’ attack.

Well, it’s nice to know that some judges carry the best interests of “society” close to their hearts. And he’s right, you know: society would indeed collapse if the courts were forced to spend their time trying and sentencing career criminals like Salem. They’re career criminals. Custodial sentences would interfere with their careers, which would be a serious infringement of their human rights. Can’t have that.

The courts, however, are well situated to send serious messages to wanton millionaires like Hussain, who need to be regularly reminded that their wealth and privilege does not give them rights over and above those enjoyed by normal non-millionaires. I have no need to remind you that non-millionaires are not allowed to defend themselves against criminals either.

So, clearly, justice is served.

In some parallel universe, anyway.

December 10, 2009

On a cosmic scale, this is still a bad idea

Filed under: Cancon, Wine — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:50

In the last Ontario Wine Review for 2009, Michael has a short rant on a rant-worthy topic:

South Africa has tar; Chile has mint; Australia, eucalyptus; Ontario: baby-poo . . . It’s quite possible that next time you wander into an Ontario winery you may be confronted by a ‘child-friendly-winery’ thanks to a website called JustTheFactsBaby.com. Now who really thinks having toddlers (or infants) along in a winery is a good idea? Honestly? There are so many reasons why not that I’m surprised that somebody has actually deemed this to be a good idea. For Godsakes, where’s MADD when you need them? I don’t have time to argue this one out again, especially in this short-rant forum, so I’ll begin here with my top three reasons and then you can input your views to me in an email. #1 — With all the talk about, and new laws against, drinking and driving and the safety of people and children on the road (heck you can’t smoke in a car with your child), I’m shocked somebody would offer up this idea that mom should get out there and sample wine with junior in tow (Is this the newest version of the Rolling Stones “Mother’s Little Helper”?) #2 — Who amongst us really wants to see toddlers running around playing tag in and amongst the bottles of wine and stemware displays; can you say ‘disaster waiting to happen’. #3 — With the whole world turning politically correct and wanting to include more people in more places, wineries should still be a sanctuary for adults. There are so many kid-centric and family oriented things to do in this world, shouldn’t a winery be a bastion where adults can congregate and still talk about adult things without hearing, “I’m sorry, did junior bump into you, I’m sure that won’t stain, at home we use …”

December 9, 2009

Tim Cavanaugh: would-be terrorist

Filed under: Books, Politics, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:51

Tim Cavanaugh recently had to travel within listening range of some conversationalists:

Readers will say I’m making the following story up to further Reason‘s anti-Palin agenda, but it’s true: On a recent airplane flight, I sat behind two women who were not traveling together but broke the ice by discussing the late Ted Kennedy’s memoir, which one was reading. The other lady had never heard of Ted Kennedy, and needed the first to describe who he was. From the exchange it seemed to me that the second woman didn’t even know that there had ever been a president named John Kennedy, though I’m hoping I just misheard. The first woman patiently went through the storied careers of the Kennedys, and when she’d finished the other one said, “Well I want to get that Sarah Palin’s book. I’m a big fan of hers.”

Yet the two of them — separated by about 100 years in age, an apparently great distance in awareness of political matters, and sharply distinct attitudes toward politicians who are said to be among the most polarizing in recent history — got along famously, gabbing amiably through a four-hour journey. It was an encouraging show of our open and gregarious national character — unless you had to listen to it, in which case you were wishing you could crash the plane into a tall building.

I have to admit it’s hard to believe that any American adult hadn’t heard of the Kennedy clan . . .

December 5, 2009

Henry 8.0

Filed under: Britain, History, Humour — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:55

H/T to Michael O’Connor Clarke, who said “Forget about the Tudors – BBC’s “Henry 8.0″ is much more historically accurate”.

Speaking of disproportional punishment

Filed under: Law, Media, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:45

BoingBoing reports on yet another vastly disproportional punishment for a victimless crime:

The movie industry has turned into an alcoholic dad who beats up his family at the slightest transgression while ignoring his own gross failures — blaming everything on external forces and refusing to confront its own problems.

Meanwhile, 22-year-old Samantha Tumpach spent two nights in jail for recording her friends singing “Happy Birthday” at a movie theater, for capturing less than four minutes of a feature film. She is charged with a felony and if convicted, could lose the right to vote, to work with children, to hold office, and to partake in full civil life.

And the movie industry’s pitch to us remains, “Please stop pirating our discs, because if you don’t stop, we may be driven out of business and then society would suffer from our absence.”

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