Bookworm Room

In the wake of the horrific child abuse scandal roiling Penn State, many have been trying to understand how Sandusky’s predatory behavior could have continued unchecked for so long.  The focal point of this “how could this happen” question is the fact that Mike McQueary actually witnessed an assault.  Rather than rearranging Sandusky’s face, McQueary [...]

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Some friends of mine have put together a clever blog.  (If you follow me on facebook, you’ve already seen me trying to help them out.)  It’s called “A Kid’s I View” and it offers travel posts that kids write.  As a mom, I see it as a good resource for kids’ writing exercises; and as [...]

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I do not understand the liberal love affair with government.  Government is inefficient and it bullies people.  Had a business engaged in the same conduct as the City of San Francisco, it would have apologized profusely or found itself flamed to death.  A government, however, can act with impunity, because it holds the power. I’m [...]

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My child participates in a youth swim league.  In a couple of weeks, all the regional swim teams are gathering together for the big meet of the season.  Each swim team has to pay a fee to participate.  Because I’m on the planning committee this year, I learned something interesting:  the private swim clubs pay [...]

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We political junkies know this.  Are ordinary voters catching on? And as you read that, you might want to read this, which looks as the overreaching EPA and the wall it seems to have it.

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Watch the EPA guy wiggle and squirm as he tries to avoid acknowledging that the EPA, in promulgating its regulations (without any oversight from The People), the EPA couldn’t care less about the effect its regulations have on jobs: Hat tip:  Earl The Bookworm Turns : A Secret Conservative in Liberal Land, available in e-format [...]

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I am cheap.  Very cheap.  That means that I’m a bargain hunter.  I like used books and cheap clothes.  I prefer to buy American but, if my pocketbook tells me that America isn’t a good deal, I’ll usually follow my pocketbook.  Usually, but not always.  If buying something from another country would put me in [...]

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Years ago, NPR did a story about the disgraceful way in which President Bush used executive orders to circumvent Congress.  Shame on him!  Sadly, I can’t find that story (although, maybe, if I had the time and patience to weed through 8 years of NPR archives I could.)  I just remember the anger about those [...]

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Earlier this month, I wrote a post about the inevitable nature of bureaucracies, which is a destructive search for regulatory perfection.  The Optimistic Conservative now provides a perfect example of the point I was trying to make.

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A couple of weeks ago, I ranted about the way bureaucracies are relentless in pursuit of some imaginary perfection.  My focus was health care, but I noted that bureaucracies will always keep going, trying to nail every detail down, so much so that life becomes impossible.  Britain perfectly proves my point about bureaucracies: Local government [...]

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The other day, I did a post about the fact that bureaucracies, in their ceaseless question for administrative protection, run the risk of killing us all.  I think Zombie makes my point precisely, in a post pointing out that people and nations most deeply wedded to perfection through bureaucracy (i.e., totalitarianism) all seem remarkably comfortable [...]

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I was speaking the other day with a friend who is contemplating a different type cancer treatment, one that is neither chemo, nor radiation.  She has reacted badly to both, so they simply aren’t an option for her. Her doctor highly recommends this third type of treatment, which he believes will provide an optimal outcome, [...]

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The parts I’ve highlighted make this sound like a very expensive proposition and, as I explain below, I’m worried that the bureaucratic rigidity that controls these types of things is part of what will make it so ridiculously expensive: Corte Madera must put a $3 million to $4 million revenue measure before voters by the [...]

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In the movie Wall-E, the little robot had a task, and it did the task, long after the task’s necessity had passed.  Like a funded bureaucrat, Wall-E just kept going and going and going. In California, the Department of Transportation was given a mandate and a task, and now, long after the money has gone [...]

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Last night, I went to hear Atul Gawande give a talk promoting his new book, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right.  The book’s premise is a simple one:  In an increasingly complex world, even experts benefit from a routine checklist that requires them to focus on the essentials necessary to their task.  The [...]

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People around the world are facing food shortages but, in the magical bureacracy that is the EU, food is being destroyed for being a millimeter off of Brussels regulations: A market trader has been banned from selling a batch of kiwi fruits because they are 1mm smaller than EU rules allow. Inspectors told 53-year- old [...]

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I can’t add anything to this that you haven’t already thought of yourselves: A solicitor who specialises in representing terror suspects and tells them not to cooperate with police was paid almost £1 million in legal aid last year. Muddassar Arani’s firm represented Abu Hamza, dirty bomb plotter Dhirin Barot and three of the 21/7 [...]

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This tidbit showed up in today’s paper: Adding an extra dollar to peak-hour commutes across the Golden Gate Bridge is supposed to make the trip faster by discouraging people from crossing at the busiest times. So bridge officials were a little befuddled when, in the days leading up to hatching the new plan, federal transportation [...]

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My mother-in-law’s parents died in Auschwitz.  She wasn’t around for that horror because her parents, in a tremendous (and prescient) sacrifice, boarded her onto the Kindertransport, which took young children out of Nazi countries.  As with my mother-in-law, most of these children never saw their parents again.  Because the fact that she had to flee [...]

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I blogged yesterday about law enforcement run amok, in connection with the decision to prosecute a mother who left a sleeping child in the car, while she walked a few feet away — something every mother in the world has done. As you may recall, I was quite heated in expounding upon the idiocy of [...]

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I blogged here about the risk of vesting too much power in petty bureaucracies.  Rhymes with Right has a really awful story about a single petty tyrant vested with too much power.

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In several posts over the last few days, I’ve commented about Disney efficiency.  Thousands of people are fairly painlessly shuffled from place to place; Fast Passes are a think of beauty, especially if individuals handle them well; everything is immaculately clean, including the overused bathrooms; the equipment functions superbly well considering the demands made upon [...]

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I grew up in San Francisco, and always found the intersection at 19th Avenue and Sloat Boulevard frustrating and nerve wracking. Sloat runs east/west and 19th Avenue runs north/south. If you’re heading south on 19th Avenue, and want to make a left turn onto Sloat (heading east), there is a left turn signal. However, if [...]

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Don Quixote will correct me if I’m wrong, but I think one of the core things about being a libertarian is that you don’t try to control people’s conduct, but you do step in if they break certain clearly stated rules. Indeed, you don’t need to be a libertarian to have that view. As a [...]

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