Turning off the Speed Cameras

It’s a start. 

Swindon has become the first English authority to scrap the use of its fixed speed cameras.

The Conservative-run borough council said it was reinvesting the £320,000 a year maintenance costs for the five cameras in road safety measures.

The move does not mean the town will be left without any speed cameras as Wiltshire Police will continue to operate mobile units.

[...]

“Because the amount of money we were putting into cameras wasn’t delivering the results we required, we decided to make the focus road safety rather than enforcement,” said Conservative councillor Peter Greenhalgh.

Attempt to Forcibly Unionize UW Academic Staff Begins

So the push begins…

Several unions affiliated with American Federation of Teachers-Wisconsin have begun a push to expand their membership by absorbing some 4,000 of the UW System’s academic staff into their units.

They plan to file unit clarification petitions to assign employees into existing unions - rather than giving these workers the chance to vote.

The newly passed state budget does give faculty and academic staff the right to be represented by a union if they choose. In those cases, unions would have to spend time and money on organizing campaigns and then have to win votes by targeted employees. Unit clarification petitions are a different process.

[...]

“We have recently learned that WPEC or other AFT representatives may be approaching UW staff members to discuss unit clarification, asking people to describe the nature of their duties,” Crist wrote in his e-mail.

“Approaching you for this purpose in the workplace while on work time is unacceptable.  You have no obligation to speak to union representatives while on work time.

Good for UW to oppose this.  Consider the fundamental unfairness of what the Democrats put in the budget.  If the union can “clarify” their jobs, then the staff can be forced into the union against their wills and then the union will extort dues out of their paychecks.  I thought unions were about a group of workers banding together to gain clout over management?  If the academic staff doesn’t want to vote to unionize, then why force them?

Oh yeah… the dues… much of which ends up in the coffers of Democratic politicians who, in turn, put crap like this into the budget to benefit the unions.

House Pumps $2 Billion More in Borrowed Money Into Cash for Clunkers

Nice.

The House has voted to rush an additional $2 billion into the popular but financially strapped “cash for clunkers” car purchase program.

The bill was approved on a vote of 316-109. House members acted within hours of learning from Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood that the program was running out of money.

Let me see if I have this right…

The government passed a program and expected the money to last until October.  It ran out of money within days, so they tripled its budget with more borrowed money.  Is that about right?  What does this tell us?

- Government is woefully bad at estimating the actual cost of things.

- Government is equally poor at predicting the consequences of what they pass.

- Government has botched the implementation of this program by changing the rules in the middle of the implementation period.

- If a government program is proving popular, they will immediately throw more money at it without even considering any of the above lessons. 

- This same government wants to control much more of our lives. 

Prediction: This program is creating an artificial demand in the automobile market, but it is not fundamentally changing the market.  As soon as the government stops pumping money into this program, demand will not only return to its previous levels, it will slump lower since some of the pent up demand has been alleviated.

Park at Work Tax

Whoa… don’t let Doyle see this.

The country’s first “workplace parking levy” will come into force in Nottingham in 2012 and is likely to be adopted by other councils.

Under the scheme, any firm with 11 or more staff parking spaces will be charged £250 a year for each. That cost could rise to £350 within two years.

Employers would be free to pass the cost on to their staff. An estimated 40,000 commuters in Nottingham drive to work and some businesses have threatened to leave the area if the scheme is introduced.

Business associations oppose the extra cost, which has been put at more than £3 billion if it were rolled out nationwide. About 10 million people in Britain drive to work every day.

Busted for Lack of Common Sense