Apparently NSF bureaucrats have been caught looking at porn instead of doing their job:

Employee misconduct investigations, often involving workers accessing pornography from their government computers, grew sixfold last year inside the taxpayer-funded foundation that doles out billions of dollars of scientific research grants, according to budget documents and other records obtained by The Washington Times.

As a result the bureaucracy is going to pull people off of fraud investigation of grants to figure out which bureaucrats are viewing porn.

“To manage this dramatic increase without an increase in staff required us to significantly reduce our efforts to investigate grant fraud,” the inspector general recently told Congress in a budget request. “We anticipate a significant decline in investigative recoveries and prosecutions in coming years as a direct result.”

This confuses me. I don’t understand why they don’t just fire those caught viewing porn. If you read the story the two examples of employees getting caught neither were fired. Seems to me you don’t need an investigation once the word goes down in a bureaucracy that viewing porn at work will result in immediate termination. That kind of policy will insure that people don’t view porn. Furthermore, its unclear why that policy did not already exist, and why the are not currently implementing in light of recent events. The fact that this policy was not already implemented speaks to one of two things: either these workers are unionized and therefore can’t be fired, or the administrators running the NSF is incompetent.

By implementing the common sense policy of those caught viewing porn will be fired, you wouldn’t have to pull investigators off of grant fraud cases. Additionally, by firing bureaucrats who view porn all day long you provide more money to the NSF to distribute to deserving scientists. I recently applied for a grant form the NSF but was rejected. Learning that taxpayer money was used to pay the salary of some unessential bureaucrat watching porn instead of funding my grant pisses me off. I don’t want him suspended for 10 days. I don’t want him to retire with benefits. He should be fired. You steal from the taxpayer you are fired.

All to often common sense policy are absent from government bureaucracy. All the more reason to supported limited government and to oppose asinine legislation like healthcare reform which expands the federal bureaucracy. I looked forward to Uncle Ray’s knee surgery being denied for money shortages all the while money is wasted on the salary of bureaucrats unable to stop watching clips of woman doing horses while on the job.

An art exhibit in New York includes the use of live nudes. Apparently this had led to people touching the ‘art’:

Some visitors to a new exhibit at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art are being asked to leave because they are touching nude performers.

One of the exhibits has people passing through a narrow passage with naked people on both sides. And apparently this has lead to touching. Duh fucking Duh. Hey I have an idea, lets get a whole bunch of naked people as exhibits, and then invite the general public to come look at them up close and personal. There is no way anyone would do in any kind of inappropriate touching in that context. Its well known that strip clubs don’t need bouncers to keep people from touching the strippers. Why should so called art exhibits be any different.

When arguing with those on the left about regulating certain industries, oftentimes the discussion turns to whether the state should mandate that information be provided to the consumer. On the face of it, this kind of argumentation on the left comes off as reasonable. Whats the problem with insuring that companies provide important information that will allow consumers to make informed decision about their products. These kinds of regulations are very common in food industry.

For example, the recent health care reform legislation included mandates on food vendors to provide caloric information on their menus. That way consumers will be aware of how many calories each item is worth. With the so called epidemic of obesity it seems reasonable to have fast food companies post their calories on the menu items. Why would anyone oppose that kind of regulation. Its not like the state is being coercive, its simply making restaurants provide information that enables the consumer to make an informed decision.

The problem is that the cost to provide that information can be really high for a restaurant. As a result, larger restaurants changes, through economy of scale are able to diffuse the cost more effectively, than smaller chains. This makes the industry more static as the cost for innovation becomes greater and helps favor established chains over up and coming restaurants. Over Hot Air they do a good job of looking at the costs of this kind of mandate and show that its not as reasonable at it first appears.

This is just a part of the long discussion I had with Ken about the problems faced in this law. We both speculated whether a calorie disclaimer amounted to advertising, and whether restaurants would have to put lawyers on retainers as consumers (and perhaps competitors) drag them into court to substantiate the claims. For that matter, how will restaurants calculate these calorie counts? Can they simply use the numbers from their suppliers to calculate the nutritional data for the end product, or will they have to get lab testing done? As the video notes, every time they have an ingredient change, or even just a supplier, they have to recalculate everything — and then reprint all of their menu boards and literature in every location.

Regulation makes things less dynamic. Sometimes that a good thing other times its not such a good thing. I suspect we are going to find out that forcing companies to post the calorie values of their menu items will turn out to be bad regulation. It wont stop the so called obesity epidemic while causing food to cost more and hinder menu innovation.Ultimately this regulation like most regulation mandated at the federal level is just no reasonable.

This story looks at the pros and cons of the European currency the Euro. About halfway through the story they talk about why the US dollar has not caused as many problem as the Euro. The reason why I bring it up is because they talk about how when one individual country in Europe runs into problems they used to be able to print their own money. However, the incorporation of the Euro these countries have less tools available to alleviate the problems of their people. This can lead to high unemployment. The story goes on to explain that when one American state faces high unemployment the unemployed move to other states. The story goes on to explain why those in European countries can not move as easily and gives a variety of reasons why. One amusing explanation they gave was that the unemployed in one language don’t speak the language to another country. Which is why the US does not have a huge immigration problem from the south.

What makes the NPR the National Liberal Radio is the failure to mention the most obvious explanation as to why people in Europe don’t switch countries when their home country has high unemployment. Overall, European country are much more socialized than the US. As a result unemployment rates are much higher. Thus, people are less likely to move because the unemployment in other countries is already higher and this creates a dearth of job opportunities. Since the narrative that socialized democracies don’t help unemployed is counter to the typical liberal rhetoric, its unsurprising that this explanation is ignored by the NLR. Excluding obvious conservative explanations when explaining some economic situation is what is meant by National Liberal Radio.

Surprising in the list of reasons they give, the fail to mention a rather large and obvious problem. Since the majority of European nations are much more nationalized, unemployment

They Supreme Court has picked up a case looking at whether the First amendment grants protesters the right to express political discontent at military funerals.

The court agreed Monday to consider whether the protesters’ message, no matter how provocative and upsetting, is protected by the First Amendment. Members of a Kansas-based church have picketed military funerals to spread their belief that U.S. deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq are punishment for the nation’s tolerance of homosexuality.

These are the protesters who show up to military funerals with signs saying the soldiers deaths were brought forth by god in retaliation for society acceptance of homosexuality. Clearly their message is disgusting and their behavior repulsive. Nevertheless freedom of speech gives them the right to express their hatred. To be perfectly frank i don’t even know why the Supreme Court agreed to take up this case. It clearly states in the constitution that people have the right express their views publicly even if the vast majority find that view morally repulsive.

Interesting, those on the left that advocate for hate crimes may need to favor the Supreme Court ruling to restrict their free speech to state consistent with their position. Its hard to see how this speech is anything but hateful.

Apparently in Brittan they are fitting trash containers with devices to measure weight. That way they can charge households by how much they throw away.

This is an increase of nearly two-thirds in just a year. The bins, which can be electronically identified and weighed, are designed for ‘pay-as-you-throw’ rubbish tax schemes.
wheelie bins

Under such schemes - which are likely to be hugely unpopular - families who put out more waste will pay higher taxes to their local council.

Disclosure of the rapid spread of chipped bins followed the announcement this week of the first council to bring in a bin tax. Bristol City is presenting its scheme as a reward for recyclers, with cash payments to homes that leave out less rubbish.

I like this idea. Getting consumers closer to the ‘actual’ cost of a service generally is more beneficial then otherwise.

This piece looks at how politicians have been trying to figure out how to pay Doctors for over 40 years. They have been failing ever since and it makes one wonder why you would ever want the state to take over health care. I would like to add, that determining the price of health care is not that hard, if you just get the fuck out of the way and let the market do it. You don’t need to ask doctors their worth, you don’t need smart people to create spreadsheets with the value of every single health care procedure, and you don’t need the GDP to cap health care worth. I know for really smart technocrats on the left this can be hard to hear, but to solve the complicated problem of pricing health care you get the fuck out of the way. The system will price itself, dumbass.

Megan McAardle notes that are current living standard for the poor is better than than the pharaoh of Egypt.

Scientists now think that King Tut may have died of malaria. As the fellow who sent me the link dryly noted, King Tut did not have good comprehensive health insurance.

All kidding aside, this is a good excuse to meditate on just how rich we are. King Tut was probably the wealthiest man in the world during his time. He died of something that wouldn’t kill the most abjectly immiserated welfare mother in the United States today, because of a combination of public health efforts, and cheap antimalarial drugs.

I think many on the left are to quick to judge our economic system by poor without giving consideration to poor in most other countries and during most any other time in history.

One superintendent actually cares about the education of children. She fired all the teachers in the union.

Under threat of losing their jobs if they didn’t go along with extra work for not a lot of extra pay, the Central Falls Teachers’ Union refused Friday morning to accept a reform plan for one of the worst-performing high schools in the state.

The superintendent didn’t blink either.

After learning of the union’s position, School Supt. Frances Gallo notified the state that she was switching to an alternative she was hoping to avoid: firing the entire staff at Central Falls High School. In total, about 100 teachers, administrators and assistants will lose their jobs.

Teachers unions are the biggest problem in educating the youth. If only other superintendents could fire union teachers.