Stupidity

Stupidity - Part One

The sponsorship scandal.

Stupidity - Part Two

"Justice" in relation to the sponsorship scandal. In a nutshell, people defraud the federal government of millions of dollars. They go on trial. The get convicted. They go to jail.
But now, most of them are being granted parole. Jean Brault has been paroled after serving a mere five months of a 30 month sentence. Why? Health concerns (he was hospitalized at least once while in prison). Also, he has a job waiting for him. (Senate post? Oh wait, PM is no longer the PM. Scratch that.) Now this is stupid. If he's too ill to remain in a minimum-security prison, one would think that he is also too ill to hold down a job. The parole board also said he was a low risk to re-offend. (Unless on of PM-the-former-PM's cronies gets back into power...) Begs the question of what the standard of likely to re-offend is. Yes, making sure people don't re-offend is a necessary and valuable part of corrections. But not the only part. Due to the magic of concurrent sentencing, Brault has served one month for each conviction. It works out to serving one day in jail for every $10,000 of bogus billing.
The average bank heist yields $3,000-$4,500. That should translate into an average bank robbery conviction of 7-10 hours.
Another sponsorship guy, Paul Coffin was paroled after serving 3 months of an 18-month sentence.

One must really applaud the justice system. Through increased efficiency, criminals can now serve their sentences in one-sixth of the time it used to take. Perhaps Jacques Paradis will be granted parole before his trial is even over.

Stupidity - Part Three

OKTOBERFASCISTS!!! Apparently, you can threaten violence against the Irish and the Scottish, you can be so drunk and disorderly (including being so drunk you can hardly light a cigarette), but if a man kisses another man, you're cut off.

Stupidity - Part Four

Telling Union gas that your husband is dead so that you can get $67.67 transferred to yourself instead of him. By Sponsorship standards, this should translate into a jail term of 9 and a half minutes.

Why Health Care Sucks

Health care sucks in Canada because the operation of the health care system requires the involvement of multiple levels of government and unions. But this is not an argument for privatization. Private enterprise has a long history of following bad examples.

The more specific reason why this mix of government and unions is bad is that they are both fond of acting for the sake of acting as well as expediency. If it gets the problem off of tomorrow's front page, then it's a job well done.

Here's what typically happens. Generalized Hospital has too little equipment and too few beds. This, in itself, is inaccurate. It has equipment, just not the best equipment for dealing with the problems it has to deal with it. There are also lots of beds. Pretty much every hospital with a bed shortage actually has wards full of beds that they can't use because they don't have enough doctors and nurses. What happens when you don't have the best equipment? Things take longer. What happens when you don't have enough nurses and doctors? Those you have are forced to work too hard. This makes them unhappy. Most of them are well paid, some extremely well paid. But, no matter how much or little you make, nobody likes being overworked. The worker thinks to himself "I don't get paid enough to put up with this."

So, the contract comes up for renegotiation. Three things are mentioned as being needed: new equipment, more staff, higher pay. There's all sorts of flowery talk about values and dedication and responsibility and patients and carer and compassion. In the end, here's what happens. Government spends more money.

The problem? They always spend more money, yet nothing improves. But now it costs more. The reason for this is that the easiest way to solve the problem of people unhappy that there's too few of them and too much work for the pay they get is to simply pay them more money. You are still under-staffed, but the staff is happier. And quieter. Money has been spent, people are happy. No longer on the front page. Good.

Except...

The staff aren't happy for long, because there's still too few of them, and most of the new machines don't get used enough because nobody's been hired to run them. But you can no longer hire anyone because the budget increases got eaten up by the raises they gave to everyone. So, next time the contract comes up again, there's the same three problems. Again, they simply give raises and the complaints go away. Until they come back. Again and again. Things still haven't improved, but now they cost way more than when this all started.

Is there a possible solution? It's my theory that overworked people are never happy. So don't try to make them happy by paying them more. Make them happy by making them work less. How is this done? Instead of raises, hire more doctors and nurses. Everybody gets the same pay, but now with less pressure. With more staff, equipment gets used more efficiently, more beds are opened up, people get treated faster and the workers are happier because they're only expected to do the job of one person, not 1.5 or 2.

Sounds radical. Maybe someone should give it a shot anyway.

Oh My God, I'm Dead!

And I thought I was just tired. At least I have a good excuse now for missing my staff meeting this morning.

I called Union Gas to ask them to send a letter to my new utility companies so that I don't have to pay a security deposit. I also asked them about a credit balance that was supposed to be sent to me from when I lived in Hamilton. I never got it, and really wasn't all that worried about it. perhaps it had been an error that got corrected. but perhaps they had sent a cheque and it got lost and they could send a new one.

So they asked a few quesitons to confirm my identity. Which they didn't need to do to send me a letter... But here' the reason they needed to ask. According to them, I was deceased.

After we had separated, my wife told them that I was dead so that she could get this credit balance of $67.67 transfered to her own account.

Which leads us to today's tip for criminals: If you are going to commit fraud (and it can be a good source of income), make sure that you at least make it worth enough money to hire a lawyer.

That is, if you don't mind taking advice from a dead man.