неустанная забота

The Indianapolis Star reports that the Indiana Department of Natural Resources wants to prosecute Jeff and Jennifer Counceller for taking care of an injured deer that showed up on their doorstep.

Правительство внимательно следит, чтобы добрые дела не оставались безнаказанными. Подумайте, разве возможно нормальное общество, в котором люди просто вот так берут и ухаживают за раненой живностью, без разрешения властей?

it's the law

If you choose not to enroll in Medicare, preferring private insurance instead, you lose your Social Security benefits.

oh noes, unintended consequences

Cities banned plastic bags in response to claims that the bags increase the costs of waste disposal and harm marine animals. But according to the article, the bag bans have exacted a serious human toll; after San Francisco's enactment of the first major plastic bag ban in 2007 the number of emergency room visits and deaths related to foodborne illness increased sharply.

The authors estimate that the additional deaths from the plastic bag ban value each saved animal at $87,500. Perhaps more significantly, this figure only takes into account the costs of those people killed by foodborne illness, not the legions hospitalized, sickened, absent from place of employment, or otherwise incapacitated because of eating food out of filthy cloth bags.

wonders of unions

Нью-Йоркский учитель, проработал один год, был уличён в сексуальном домогательстве к ученицам. Профсоюз не разрешает его уволить, поэтому ему 13 лет платят зарплату за то, что он бьёт баклуши. С регулярной индексацией за стаж:

He worked just one year as a full-time teacher in New York. But he has collected nearly $1 million for 13 years for doing almost nothing.

Aryeh Eller, 46, a former music teacher at Hillcrest HS in Queens, is the longest-sitting “rubber room” teacher in the city. He was yanked from the classroom in 1999 and confessed to repeated sexual harassment of female students, according to a 2000 investigative report.

But a hearing officer who decides whether tenured teachers can be fired dismissed the case, ruling that Eller wasn’t told his rights. The Department of Education, considering him unfit for teaching, put him in a holding room for a decade.

табачные деньги

Millions of dollars originally intended for smoking cessation programs in Massachusetts have been diverted to offset budget deficits, leaving the state struggling to fund quit-smoking hotlines, treatment programs and anti-tobacco advertising, the New England Center for Investigative Reporting has found.

“Roughly 99 percent of all the tobacco dollars that come into the state are used for something else,” said Stephen Shestakofsky, recently retired executive director of Tobacco Free Massachusetts, an anti-tobacco advocacy group. He was referring to the nearly $254 million in tobacco-related legal awards given to Massachusetts in 2012. More than $561 million in tobacco taxes was also collected, bringing the state’s total tobacco tally to just over $815 million, the CDC reports.

Ну естественно. Деньги-то остаются деньгами, и почему это какие-то курильщики должны стоять первые в очереди, когда другим нужнее? В конце концов, о них уже позаботились, подняв цены на сигареты, и таким образом стимулируя их бросить.