Free Republic

ANNAPOLIS (AP) — A $10 million plan to bring less-expensive high-speed Internet access to rural parts of Maryland is on hold because of a bureaucratic dispute that critics say is a case of red tape getting in the way of progress. State lawmakers voted two years ago to set aside the money to build a "spine" of fiber-optic cable in three rural regions of the state — Southern Maryland, the Eastern Shore and Western Maryland — where Internet-service providers don't always provide high-speed access. At the time, supporters said the Maryland Broadband Cooperative would bring big-city Internet access to underserved...

SACRAMENTO - While California voters approved $9.5 billion in bonds to improve the state's water infrastructure last year, little of that money has been allocated despite a lengthy drought and growing strains on the system. Political infighting and bureaucratic red tape have slowed spending of the 2006 water bonds, even as state lawmakers and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger consider asking voters for billions of dollars in additional water bonds on next year's ballot. Only about 14 percent of the Proposition 1E water bond approved by voters last year - and about one-third of the Proposition 84 water bond - have been...

A pensioner has been told she must stop tending a public flower bed unless she agrees to wear a fluorescent jacket, put up warning signs and use a lookout. June Turnbull, 79, of Urchfront near Devizes, has nurtured the blooms on the plot for six years. But now she is being told to obey health and safety rules after being spotted by a county council official. Mrs Turnbull said: "I was very angry, I mean it seems so petty bothering with what I do here. There's just no point." Peter Hanson, divisional highways manager at Wiltshire County Council, said: "We...

Bay State dogs may soon end up on a shorter leash if state and local legislators get their way. From lap dogs to pit bulls, none of the state’s pooches will escape the latest round of canine crackdowns. “You can’t allow people to be afraid all the time,” said Avril T. Elkort, vice chairwoman of the Canton Board of Selectmen, where a new ordinance limits residents to one pit bull per household. “It was a public safety issue.” Canton animal control officer Ellen Barnett objected to the new regulation. “The problem I had with it is that it was too...

I have posted several times in the past about this topic, this is just an update for you techheads who might be interesetd...oh, and anyone who uses the internet... which is...everyone. Most people have no idea what CALEA is. It is a law to assist law enforcement's ability to intercept phone calls. It was written and passed and signed into law in 1994 by Congress. It mandated that digital switching equipment technology be required to have certain specific capabilities which would make tapping a person's phone calls, and making the call history easier to get. Congress ante'd up millions to...

Business at Weidmann Electrical Technology in St. Johnsbury is booming. So much, the company is looking to expand its operations. But that expansion will not take place in Vermont due to high taxes and a strong impression by investors that Vermont is unfriendly to business, according to a letter sent April 2 by John Goodrich, vice president and general manager of Weidmann Technology. "The paradox of the situation is this: we are extremely busy but are unable to expand in Vermont," ... Vermont needs to decide if it indeed wants to encourage in-state businesses to expand and new industry to...

Women civil servants in India have expressed shock at new appraisal rules which require them to reveal details of their menstrual cycles. Under the new nationwide requirements, female officials also have to say when they last sought maternity leave. Women civil servants say the questions are a gross invasion of privacy. One told the BBC she was "gobsmacked". Annual appraisals and health checks are mandatory in India's civil service. The ministry was unavailable for comment. But one of its most senior bureaucrats was quoted in the press as saying the new questions had been based on advice from health officials....

WASHINGTON, March 29 — Lapses in using a digital medical record system for tracking wounded soldiers have led to medical mistakes and delays in care, and have kept thousands of injured troops from getting benefits, according to former defense and military medical officials. The Defense Department’s inability to get all hospitals to use the system has routinely forced thousands of wounded soldiers to endure long waits for treatment, the officials said, and exposed others to needless testing. Several department officials said the problem may have played a role in the suicide of a soldier last year after he was taken...

Benefits agency closes 309 offices The Swedish Social Insurance Administration, which handles all Swedish pension and sick benefit payments, plans to close 309 of its 330 offices. Customers are to be encouraged to use the Internet and telephone to communicate with the organization. "Many of our customers have been dissatisfied with long telephone waiting times and long waits for their cases to be dealt with," said Maivor Isaksson, production director at the organization, known in Swedish as Försäkringskassan. It is planned for Försäkringskassan to cooperate with other state authorities in many 280 communities in Sweden, in order to provide some...

Zhang entered one of China's top universities before he was 13 years old. Let's see: when I was 13, I was still waiting to go through puberty. Zhang replaced Lee Kai-fu, (I have written quite a few blogs about Lee) as director of Microsoft's research center in Beijing in 2000. One thing that Zhang could do that no one else could before him was convince the Chinese government to award post-doctoral degrees to a foreign company for the first time. Zhang seems to be especially skilled at dealing with Chinese officials and his ability to cut through red tape to...

See for example this thread first. I'll tell you why there's such a fuss: A four-year-old outran a BUS! (He's Indian, you know. where buses are slow.) They should outsource their transport to us.

LOS ANGELES, California - A vibrant suborbital space travel industry, including space hotels, and treks to the Moon and beyond are attainable, but only if governmental regulations don't stifle creativity and breakthroughs in building affordable and safe public spaceliners. Those are a few of the views Burt Rutan, head of the Mojave, California-based Scaled Composites--and leader of the team that designed, built and flew the milestone making SpaceShipOne, the first privately financed suborbital rocket plane--shared today with attendees of the the 25th International Space Development Conference. The event runs here May 4-7. Rutan also took the time to fault NASA's...

SACRAMENTO - Three Central Valley lawmakers unveiled flood-control bills Wednesday as part of a larger rollout of public works legislation sponsored by Assembly Republicans. Stockton's Greg Aghazarian, Fresno's Mike Villines and Richvale's Doug LaMalfa are carrying the legislation, all of which would suspend the California Environmental Quality Act for levee repairs. Assembly Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield said the proposals, along with others to streamline road-building projects and protect highway money, represent their stance in the larger debate over public works that is dominating discussion at the Capitol. Suspending CEQA, as the act is known, strips layers of bureaucratic...

Europe's most successful companies are turning their backs on EU markets because of red tape, a high-level report said yesterday. The companies that Europe needed to survive were instead investing more money than ever in the United States and Asia, concluded the report, presented to the European Commission in Brussels. The lack of investment was so dire that it threatened Europe's "comfortable" way of life. "Europe has to act before it's too late," said the report's author, Esko Aho, the former prime minister of Finland. The findings made unsettling reading for the EU leaders, ripping into their pledges to build...

At the front edge of the rainy season, flood-control channels countywide are choked by silt, reeds and brush. In years past, maintenance crews would have cleared the channels as part of routine cleanup programs. But state and federal agencies are clamping down on cities' flood-control maintenance and emphasizing that wetland protections extend to floodways. The regulators' goal is to curtail the once-common practice of dredging San Diego County's waterways without permits. Hundreds of miles of creeks and rivers drain the region's watershed to the ocean. Some are natural waterways and others are lined by concrete. The regulators contend that some...

My colleague Bruce Reed says that President Bush waived the Davis-Bacon "prevailing wage" rules for post-Katrina federal construction projects "because a group of conservative members of Congress saw a convenient opening to drive liberal members crazy." _______Snip_____________ Let's hear from someone who does know something about Davis-Bacon! Kausfiles has received an e-mail from a seemingly well-informed source deep within the federal bureaucracy:. I am a Federal Government Contract Specialist (job title: means I award contracts on behalf of the government) and know a lot about this law and have dealt a lot with this law. ... [I]f you want to...

The personal, commercial and civic desolation left by Hurricane Katrina has inevitably bred comparisons to another scene of unthinkable loss and ruin: lower Manhattan after 9/11. While the recovery effort on the Gulf Coast is unique, one area in which New York's experience provides an example is its support for small business reconstruction. Like Hurricane Katrina, the 9/11 attacks destroyed or crippled thousands of the smallest local businesses and nonprofits... the "soft" infrastructure of any commercial or industrial district.... After 9/11, Seedco became the primary organization assisting these businesses. We tailored a specific response to the challenges faced... Our approach...

WE MIGHT have had a faster response to Katrina, and prevented the 9/11 attacks altogether, if only we'd followed the advice of Dick the Butcher. Dick the Butcher is the character in Shakespeare's play Henry VI who says: "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." Dick is a repulsive character. Shakespeare's point is that lawyers are vital to the functioning of civilized society. They are the oil in the gears of commerce, the engine of democracy. But when we have too many lawyers, and we pay them too much deference, that oil can turn into sand.

My friend Ralph Peters told me his sources in the Pentagon told him lawyers for FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security spent the weekend before Katrina struck arguing about what they could or couldn't do -- the emphasis was on couldn't -- absent certain permissions from Blanco. Former members of Able Danger, a military intelligence unit, have claimed they had identified hijack leader Mohamed Atta and the members of his cell more than a year before 9/11, and had tried to pass this information on to the FBI, but were forbidden to do so on the advice of Pentagon...

19 September 2005 EXCLUSIVE: UP IN FLAMES http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=16147117%26method=full%26siteid=94762%26headline=exclusive--58--up-in-flames-name_page.html Tons of British aid donated to help Hurricane Katrina victims to be BURNED by Americans From Ryan Parry, US Correspondent in New York HUNDREDS of tons of British food aid shipped to America for starving Hurricane Katrina survivors is to be burned. US red tape is stopping it from reaching hungry evacuees. Instead tons of the badly needed Nato ration packs, the same as those eaten by British troops in Iraq, has been condemned as unfit for human consumption. And unless the bureaucratic mess is cleared up soon it could be sent...