Apparently NSF bureaucrats have been caught looking at porn instead of doing their job:

Employee misconduct investigations, often involving workers accessing pornography from their government computers, grew sixfold last year inside the taxpayer-funded foundation that doles out billions of dollars of scientific research grants, according to budget documents and other records obtained by The Washington Times.

As a result the bureaucracy is going to pull people off of fraud investigation of grants to figure out which bureaucrats are viewing porn.

“To manage this dramatic increase without an increase in staff required us to significantly reduce our efforts to investigate grant fraud,” the inspector general recently told Congress in a budget request. “We anticipate a significant decline in investigative recoveries and prosecutions in coming years as a direct result.”

This confuses me. I don’t understand why they don’t just fire those caught viewing porn. If you read the story the two examples of employees getting caught neither were fired. Seems to me you don’t need an investigation once the word goes down in a bureaucracy that viewing porn at work will result in immediate termination. That kind of policy will insure that people don’t view porn. Furthermore, its unclear why that policy did not already exist, and why the are not currently implementing in light of recent events. The fact that this policy was not already implemented speaks to one of two things: either these workers are unionized and therefore can’t be fired, or the administrators running the NSF is incompetent.

By implementing the common sense policy of those caught viewing porn will be fired, you wouldn’t have to pull investigators off of grant fraud cases. Additionally, by firing bureaucrats who view porn all day long you provide more money to the NSF to distribute to deserving scientists. I recently applied for a grant form the NSF but was rejected. Learning that taxpayer money was used to pay the salary of some unessential bureaucrat watching porn instead of funding my grant pisses me off. I don’t want him suspended for 10 days. I don’t want him to retire with benefits. He should be fired. You steal from the taxpayer you are fired.

All to often common sense policy are absent from government bureaucracy. All the more reason to supported limited government and to oppose asinine legislation like healthcare reform which expands the federal bureaucracy. I looked forward to Uncle Ray’s knee surgery being denied for money shortages all the while money is wasted on the salary of bureaucrats unable to stop watching clips of woman doing horses while on the job.

An art exhibit in New York includes the use of live nudes. Apparently this had led to people touching the ‘art’:

Some visitors to a new exhibit at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art are being asked to leave because they are touching nude performers.

One of the exhibits has people passing through a narrow passage with naked people on both sides. And apparently this has lead to touching. Duh fucking Duh. Hey I have an idea, lets get a whole bunch of naked people as exhibits, and then invite the general public to come look at them up close and personal. There is no way anyone would do in any kind of inappropriate touching in that context. Its well known that strip clubs don’t need bouncers to keep people from touching the strippers. Why should so called art exhibits be any different.

When arguing with those on the left about regulating certain industries, oftentimes the discussion turns to whether the state should mandate that information be provided to the consumer. On the face of it, this kind of argumentation on the left comes off as reasonable. Whats the problem with insuring that companies provide important information that will allow consumers to make informed decision about their products. These kinds of regulations are very common in food industry.

For example, the recent health care reform legislation included mandates on food vendors to provide caloric information on their menus. That way consumers will be aware of how many calories each item is worth. With the so called epidemic of obesity it seems reasonable to have fast food companies post their calories on the menu items. Why would anyone oppose that kind of regulation. Its not like the state is being coercive, its simply making restaurants provide information that enables the consumer to make an informed decision.

The problem is that the cost to provide that information can be really high for a restaurant. As a result, larger restaurants changes, through economy of scale are able to diffuse the cost more effectively, than smaller chains. This makes the industry more static as the cost for innovation becomes greater and helps favor established chains over up and coming restaurants. Over Hot Air they do a good job of looking at the costs of this kind of mandate and show that its not as reasonable at it first appears.

This is just a part of the long discussion I had with Ken about the problems faced in this law. We both speculated whether a calorie disclaimer amounted to advertising, and whether restaurants would have to put lawyers on retainers as consumers (and perhaps competitors) drag them into court to substantiate the claims. For that matter, how will restaurants calculate these calorie counts? Can they simply use the numbers from their suppliers to calculate the nutritional data for the end product, or will they have to get lab testing done? As the video notes, every time they have an ingredient change, or even just a supplier, they have to recalculate everything — and then reprint all of their menu boards and literature in every location.

Regulation makes things less dynamic. Sometimes that a good thing other times its not such a good thing. I suspect we are going to find out that forcing companies to post the calorie values of their menu items will turn out to be bad regulation. It wont stop the so called obesity epidemic while causing food to cost more and hinder menu innovation.Ultimately this regulation like most regulation mandated at the federal level is just no reasonable.