Judge not the horse by his saddle.
Chinese Proverb
Guest Quotation of the Day
Liberals have hearts that bleed so profusely that it often prevents oxygen from getting to their brains and results in extreme lightheadedness, and cloudy and defective decision-making. - Mark Perry of Carpe Diem.
Image of the Day
 |
| Via IPI |
On a recent move, I decided to use the USPS online portal--only to find out that surprise, surprise, it's more complicated than filling out your standard low-tech postcard at the local branch. For "our" protection, there is a step that wants to verify the change by charging a nominal amount to your credit or debit card. The only problem is--I got a rejection implying the credit card issuer had declined the transaction for an incorrect billing address.
I had done literally dozens of credit card transactions with private-sector companies with the same billing address, no problems. In a job 20 years ago, I had done a lot of projects involving merge-matching and householding of various datasets. For example, if you were running a promotional campaign, you wouldn't want to send redundant mailings based on duplicate or near-duplicate records of name/addresses among multiple datasets.
I did notice that on the rejected transaction, the post office had reformatted the address with the official 9-digit version of my zipcode. I didn't know enough about how credit card issuers validate submitted addresses, but it didn't seem that a 9-digit should fail. I then called the issuer; it took a longer-than-necessary conversation to discover that, in fact, they had verified the USPS transactions.
I called up USPS customer service. I first had to deal with someone who couldn't understand my point about the USPS rejecting a transaction my credit card issuer had approved. After maybe 15 minutes, she offered to connect me to tech support. I then spent the next 20 minutes on hold; the agent bluntly told me I had no alternative but to go to my local branch and fill in the postcard.
Remy Does Spoof Spot For Hillary-Endorsed Email Servers
Facebook Corner
(IPI). Among the 50 states, Illinois ranks 41st in educational freedom, the worst in the Midwest.
What are the parameters used to define educational freedom? We have the highest possible level of freedom when it comes to homeschooling. Public schools are owned and ran by the government. They have no freedom, in any state, by the definition of their existence.
Did you read the appendix to the John Locke Foundation report, which clearly describes the methodology? We, of course, are referring to alternatives to the local public school monopoly, principally private school, public school (charter schools), and homeschooling., and various related policies, mandates, funding, etc. No, Illinois in the studies I've seen on homeschooling doesn't rate in the top 50%.
(IPI). Local-government employees are typically barred from serving in local elected office, given they’d be sitting on both sides of the bargaining table.
But one group of public employees is exempt from this sensible safeguard: firefighters
Why don't you guys change your name from Illinois policy to Illinois union haters. Mr. School would have to excuse himself from anything fire department related because it is a conflict of interest. With the department being a village department he can still vote and make decisions on other aspects of the village, and the fact that he belongs to a union doesn't mean anything. In case you people didn't know most village managers and management personnel in governmental entities have employment contracts that they bargained over wages, benefits and working conditions so why can't the employees doing the work be able to do the same thing. Maybe you need to look at your own city or village management or leadership and see what they do for a living, I bet there is more corruption then you would know about.
As usual, the corrupt union trolls lack the moral backbone and the integrity to admit the explicit conflict of interest. I've worked for management consultancies affiliated with accounting firms. Accountants cannot have the appearance, never mind the reality of conflict of interest. It goes beyond an accountant owning a hundred shares in or his wife working for the client. Even though I never was in contact with any CPA's involved with any audit, one of the first things I had to do was scan lists of clients against my personal investments; if I owned any shares, I had to report them and arrange for their disposal. So let's stop pretending conflict of interest only applies to public sector employees/union members.
I noticed that none of the trolls is arguing the equal protection issue--why firefighters are allowed an exemption. To the OP, employees are allowed to address their concerns about work conditions, et al., without a direct vote in governance. To the other troll on the IPI "agenda", keep in mind unions enjoy legal monopoly privileges, and unless you haven't noticed, they have opposed other forms of cronyism corruption.
Political Cartoon
 |
| Courtesy of Steve Kelley via Townhall |
Carly Simon, "Coming Around Again"
