Beware the Awesome Power of a Fully Operational Eurocrat!

(via Drudge)

From Financial Times:

Flawed computer models may have exaggerated the effects of an Icelandic volcano eruption that has grounded tens of thousands of flights, stranded hundreds of thousands of passengers and cost businesses hundreds of millions of euros.

The power of the bureaucrat is the power of no. Give a bureaucrat an opportunity to say no, and they'll say it. The calculus a bureacrat uses to assess risk has nothing to do with reason, and everything to do with power. This is at minimum a $1B mistake that disrupted hundreds of thousands of lives all because a tiny, previously unheralded sub-group of a UN sub-committee (The VAAC) got a raging regulatory hard on. I would bet good money that nothing will change at the VAAC, if anything, the discovery of their awesome power will only excite them to throw an even bigger monkeywrench into international aviation next time they're given an excuse.

Europe has decided unelected commissions, committees, study groups, quasi-autonomous non-government organizations, and their ilk should be welcome to run roughshod over the rights of citizens and sovereign governments to make their own decisions regarding risk. I would hope the next time one of our Cascade Volcanoes spewed in a similar manner, that our FAA would question any recommendations coming from the VAAC much more thoroughly than the European Union did.

In the European Union model of government, individuals don't have the right to say yes in order to override the bureaucrat's no.

Regulations exist for a reason, and bureaucrats must have some power, but that power should be limited, and subordinate to elected officials. Where individuals assume risks that only put themselves in harms way, that should be considered a basic human right (Pursuit of Happiness, and all).

Eurocrats have forgotten that, and the Obama Administration would like to pretend that the Pursuit of Happiness at the core of our founding doesn't also imply the notion of assumed risk.

Your Daily Photo (Our Public Sector Union Employees Earn Every Penny of Their Gold Plated Benefits Packages Edition)

Someone at CalTrans decided to think 'outside of the box', and rather than going with the boring, old, rhyming admonition to buckle up, "click it, or ticket", decided to throw holiday weekend travellers a little message to ponder, "click it, or diesel". As far as I can tell, this message was on every CalTrans message board that wasn't being used to relay semi-accurate, almost up-to-date traffic information.

I don't see how such well compensated, dedicated, and bright employees of CalTrans could have botched such an easy and cliched phrase, so rather than mere incompetence, I'm going to err on the side of assuming some sort of devious brilliance is behind these non sequitur road signs. After all, with an annual budget of $60,800,000,000, I would expect they'd have the cash lying around to pay for a proofreader to check what they chose to display on every sign they control up and down the state.

Are we supposed to believe drivers of diesel vehicles are exempt from seat-belt laws this holiday weekend?

Are we supposed to speculate on the sexual orientation of any unbelted women we spy?

Are they engaging in some bizarre viral marketing campaign to raise the California motoring public's awareness of the benefits of diesel autos?

I'm expecting for the Independence Day travel period that they throw up on their signs something along the lines of "Don't Drink and Derive" just to make sure folks are paying attention.

Also, just so you know, I did take that shot while driving, but I wasn't operating the camera. I had my camera mounted on a tripod, taking shots at 12 second intervals, and this was the one shot that captured one of those CalTrans signs displaying this weekend's odd message.

I didn't expect the usual holiday traffic jams, what with gas prices, economic woes, Obama chastising folks for going to Vegas and all, but looks like everyone was still trying to get out of L.A., just like on any other long weekend, so instead of a quick afternoon day trip to the desert as planned, I set up my camera to take shots as I drove up I-15 and instead of going deep into the Mojave as the sun set, I circled back and headed up to Big Bear. Below is the rest of the picture I cropped above, the full picture shows you all that early evening get out of town traffic that I had been sitting in all afternoon.

Victims Who Refuse To Remain Victimized Are No Longer Victims . . .

. . . if you recover your property after having it stolen, then no crime was committed?

Seems like a case could be made that British crime stats are being artificially manipulated by police who refuse to take crime reports in cases like this (I've seen on the internet more than one anecdote or article similar to this one).

Reported property crime rates throughout most of the larger EU countries is much higher than it is in the United States, knowing that you won't serve much time if caught, won't be facing a firearm if confronted by someone you target, may lead to higher crime rates.

It's just a thought.

(also, if Althouse can pick the bones of the Daily Mail for many of her posts, so can I)

Maybe, Just Maybe, It's Because the District is Too Big, and the Union Rules Too Restrictive . . .

. . . a continuing massive breakdown in a payroll system installed more than six months ago for LAUSD.

The whole thing is one nightmare after another, but the tone of the article is, 'these poor folks', 'too bad this stuff has to happen', 'they just need to spend even more money to fix the problem', etc.

$95M for a payroll system that doesn't work is absurd. $45M in overpayments to 28,700 employees, mostly on June 5th alone, should be a bigger scandal than it was.

To paraphrase James Carville, it's the bureaucracy idiotas.

When schools complain about not having enough money to pay teachers, maybe they should first figure out how to pay the teachers like any other company would. And I'll bet you any amount of money, that if Deloitte Consulting were contracting to upgrade the system for a similarly sized private company, that A) they would have been bid down to about $10-15M for the project instead of $95M, and B) it would have worked first time out or Deloitte would have had to spend their own money to fix it, and C) Deloitte would have worked with the Human Resources department of that company to fix the system from the ground up rather than try and kludge together a computer system to fit around the rules that already existed in place, and D) Wouldn't still be facing these sort of problems six months after the initial roll out of the system.

I'm guessing union intransigence and typical bureaucratic nonsense are responsible for 80% or more of the expected cost of fixing this problem (which given that they admit to spending $95M and look to spend tens of millions more). I'm thinking somewhere around $100M will be overspent to fix this problem they created. That's money that didn't go to learning, didn't find its way into teachers pockets, and taken directly from local, state and federal taxpayers. With a student body of around 700,000 that breaks down to a paltry $143 per pupil, so I guess it's no big deal, maybe they should go ahead and waste another $100,000,000 fixing this and take another $143 per kid away from the classrooms.

Funny how the LAT can manage to keep a mostly neutral and sympathetic tone while reporting on a story like this (I sense no finger pointing, just sympathy for the poor teachers who aren't getting paid properly), but write a story on some stupid puffed-up Congressional investigation into the Executive branch and objectivity gets thrown out the window.

(Given the photo used to illustrate this story, and the fact that the phrase, "hardest hit" is actually in the story, I could have titled this, "Bureaucrats Screw Up, Minority Women Hardest Hit . . .")

Bravo to Deloitte Consulting for milking this scam for all its worth (way to increase shareholders value!), and a boo and a hiss to the LAUSD Superintendent for gross dereliction of duty.

We Find Your Lack of Offense Offensive . . .

A Buddhist has been prevented from calling his restaurant Fat Buddha because some city council bureaucrat is afraid that the phrase "Fat Buddha" might be too provocative.

Have they not seen the many depictions of fat Buddhas throughout history?

Let me see if I can encapsulate the thought process coming from Tracey Ingle, head of the city council of Durham, England's cultural services, I imagine it's something like this . . .

I find your lack of offense at the offensive portrayal of an obese Buddha troublesome. Furthermore, would we allow you to depict the Buddha in such a manner, all references to his weight should be in phrases less provocative and more acceptable to our more sensitive modern mores, "Weight Challenged Buddha" or "Pleasantly Plump Buddha" or "Big Boned Buddha" or "I'm Not Fat I'm Just Hefty Buddha" would have all been acceptable.

However I've been informed by Ivor Biggerse the director for the city of Durham's health services that due to the pernicious influence of too many video games and American TV programmes on our children that we are facing an epidemic of obesity in our area, and as such, any positive depictions of 'jolly' fat people would be counterproductive towards the aim of reducing our growing obesity problem. Surely one of the more austere and ascetic depictions of the Buddha would be more appropriate given current health goals.

Actually I need to rethink that last suggestion as I've been informed by Ima Buttinsky from our city's mental health services that there are also many anorexic people in our city, so any depiction of an ascetic Buddha shouldn't be too thin as some of the afflicted might see these depictions and use them for 'thinspiration'.

Also, I'm afraid that the cultural sensitivities of our Islamic neighbours might come into play with the depiction of a figure of worship. As some within their faith believe in the banning of all images of not only Allah, Mohammed, and other lesser prophets, but of any human whatsoever, it would be best if your restaurant has no images within, or uses any images in their advertising of the Buddha.

Actually, given that all variations and body types of the Buddha really can't satisfy all the differing sensitivities in our fine city, it would be best for everyone if you don't open up your restaurant at all. I realise you are poised to employ 60 people in your restaurant, but what's the potential employment of five dozen souls when weighed against the sensitivities of the entire community? Those jobs simply aren't worth the risk of offending one group or another.

I might have ruled differently had the owner of the restaurant not suggested such a provocative name in the first place, but given that initial provocation, my only recourse is to do what I can to prevent this business for operating for the sake of communal cohesion and peace and to preserve out community's reputation for tolerance, understanding, and reason.

Maybe one day when all prejudices, health problems, and religious issues are resolved in a manner that satisfies all parties, we could sit back and laugh or ignore things like a restaurant named "Fat Buddha", but the age we live in is not a time of laughter, and we musn't contribute to the problem of global insensitivity that plagues all aspects of life. I reject the name of your restaurant so that I may be part of the solution, not the problem, I hope everyone else will see the careful and considered reasoning that went into this decision.

Maybe Eddie Fung should have tried to open up his restaurant in the other, bigger, more laissez-faire Durham, instead.

Word of the Day (Byurowkraddick Fowl Up's Edishun)

Gobsmacking

(Also, the Southern Stereotypes Edition of Word of the Day)