Tag: complaint

Voters in Maryland – Protest the voting machines

Techdirt: Diebold’s Solution To E-Voting Problems: Beg Poll Workers Not To Touch Touchscreens

The state ran a daylong test, and found plenty of problems still to overcome — including the same problems with the e-poll books that caused all sorts of delays during the election.

For any of you living in Maryland, do not use a Diebold machine to vote this November.  Demand something else.  I don’t know what legal rights you may have, but there must be some alternative voting method for people who can’t use the touchscreen (The blind, for example).  Call your congressperson, your senator, your mayor, governor, whatever you have to do.  Voting is way too important to be left to a company like Diebold that refuses to provide a working product.

Time again for the flu shot controversy

I was listening to NPR this morning, and they were talking about the difficulty we’ve had in distributing flu shots.  The CDC says that 75% of the country should have a flu shot.  Surveys say that 50% are planning to.  But how about the vaccines?  The NPR story didn’t give all the details, but they did say that doctors give out 70% of the vaccines.  But often big companies like WalMart get more of the vaccines.  NPR didn’t come out and say it, but I suspect this is because the drug companies make more money when they sell to big pharmacies.  I doubt that WalMart pays more than the doctors do, but Walmart is also in the position to buy millions of dollars worth, and pledge to buy millions more of other drugs on the condition that they get the flu vaccines.

Anyway, my point here is that these drug companies are, in effect, deciding who gets a flu vaccine.  Never mind that we should have enough for every human being in the country, if not the planet, just because it’s the right thing to do.  Let’s pretend for a minute that there’s a legitimate reason we can’t produce enough that doesn’t involve profitability.  Who, then, should decide where those vaccines should go?  And now we’re back into the argument over health care.  Can we assign responsibility to the government to ensure that the country is as healthy as possible?  Does every American deserve health care?  The answers are “I hope so” and “yes”.

When it comes to health, no one should ever be denied because it’s not profitable.  I don’t know how to overcome the problems with “free” health care.  I don’t know how to minimize abuse of the system.  But we have to figure it out.

FBI cant find evidence of broken laws

Foley case, a legal ‘gray area’ – Today – MSNBC.com

One federal law enforcement official said the FBI reviewed some Foley-related e-mail in July but concluded that no federal law had been violated.

Are you kidding me? With all the ridiculous crap that we aren’t allowed to do, like photograph a building in DC or bring a bottle of water on a plane, you expect me to believe that telling a sixteen-year-old boy that you’d like to take his clothes off doesn’t violate any federal law?

When they write laws to protect children from MySpace or maybe seeing a naked person on TV, did they just forget to write the laws to protect children from actually being molested? I don’t have kids yet, but I’m pretty sure I can speak for most parents when I say that I’d rather a child watch an hour long TV show of naked people screaming profanity than get one single instant message from a congressman asking for sex. Am I being ridiculous?

We need to prosecute this guy, and then we need to get him some help.

Why arent we talking about sending him to jail?

CNN.com – Attorney: Clergyman molested Foley as teen – Oct 3, 2006

You know, even if Mark Foley’s lawyer is telling the truth, and Foley was both molested as a child and never actually had any sort of sex with any underage boys, Foley still needs to go to jail. Unless he can prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that every single time he said or did anything innapropriate to or with an underage boy, he was completely trashed. Then I’m okay with alcohol treatment.

Where are the Florida police? Shouldn’t someone have arrested him by now for soliciting sex from a minor or something like that? You can’t tell me that they haven’t already published enough to get a warrant and arrest him. Are we not arresting him because he’s in alcohol treatment? If I go rob a bank and then join AA, is that cool with everyone?

We seem to be focusing a lot on Hastert, and whether or not he should resign. I mean, there was an article at the National Review Online calling for him to resign. He probably should. At the very least, he wasn’t paying enought attention.

But that’s really not the point.  The point is that Mark Foley broke the law, and he needs to be prosecuted.  He probably needs some help, too.  His lawyer seems to want to dismiss this by saying that Foley’s gay.  That’s fine, but there’s a huge difference between “Foley is gay” and “Foley tries to have sex with teenage boys”.

Electronic poll books in Tuesday test

Electronic poll books in Tuesday test

State election officials and the manufacturer of the machines, Diebold Inc., will conduct the test from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m. at the BWI Airport Marriott Hotel.

Any of you in Maryland anywhere near BWI should go take part in this test today.  I suggest reading up on how to hack a Diebold machine so you can try and do it while you’re voting.  Anyone who reads Techdirt (Or, for that matter, anyone paying attention to any election in the last few years) knows that Diebold has made a lot of machines that don’t work very well, has been extremely resistant to allowing any kind of testing, and has ignored repeated assertions that the machines are insecure.

To all of you who find a Diebold machine in front of you on election day – refuse to vote on it.  If we make enough noise, maybe we can actually have an election that is efficient, accurate, and verifiable.  Note well, though, that I can not be held responsible if you protest too loudly and are arrested.  That’s all you.

A whole bunch of complainers

VentBox

I got a link from a new complaint blog this afternoon, and I thought I’d return the favor.  Apparently there’s a whole complaint blog community out there that I haven’t made myself a part of.  I may have to change that.

Now, do I post this tagged with a “complaint” category because it’s on the subject of complaining, even though it isn’t really a complaint?  I think I will.

The Pop Tart Scourge

Someone in the office just toasted a cinnamon Pop Tart.  It smells really good.  But Pop Tarts are evil.  First of all, anything with that much sugar is dessert, not breakfast.  Second of all, and this should be illegal, they count a serving as ONE Pop Tart.  You all know the Pop Tarts packaging – they come two to a bag.  And the bag is not resealable.  It’s not even big enough to fold over to keep the second Tart slightly fresh.  There should be a law that anything contained in a non-resealable container is one serving.  Actually, I guess they’d have to make it more specific, because I’d hate to buy a value pack of six pounds of chicken breasts and then have to eat the whole package.  Could it apply only to snack foods?  I guess then they’d just fight to make Pop Tarts a breakfast food, not a snack food.

In any event, it’s an outrage.  One Pop Tart is about 200 calories, 60 of those from fat.  But you can’t eat just one Pop Tart unless you’ve got a buddy to eat the other one.  So one Pop Tart is, in effect, 400 calories and 35% of your RDA for saturated fat.

However, if we make anything in one package have to be a serving, they’d just start packaging things in more plastic.  You’d have a box of cereal that contains 15 little shrink-wrapped packets of exactly 37 bran flakes.  Our landfills would explode.

All of this makes me glad that I ate a bowl of Kellogs Smart Start and some organic yogurt for breakfast.

Lets regulate all the competition away

Verizon, Montgomery Reach Tentative Deal – washingtonpost.com

Jane Lawton, the county’s cable administrator, said the county’s goal was to get a deal that was equitable to the agreements with Comcast and RCN Corp., the two other cable operators in the county.”We didn’t want to disrupt a level playing field and be open to challenges by competitors,” she said.

Let’s see . . . cable companies nationwide have local monopolies almost everywhere. I don’t know of anyone who can choose cable provider A instead of cable provider B. So now Verizon is introducing real competition, something that should raise the quality of service and lower prices for consumers, and the Montgomery County cable administrator (Whatever the heck that is) is complaining about an unlevel playing field? That’s ridiculous. If the playing field is not level, it’s because YOU, Jane Lawton, and your predecessors have imposed stupid regulations on the existing cable companies. So now you have to make sure you impose them on Verizon, too.

As part of the 15-year agreement, Verizon will pay a franchise fee of 5 percent of television revenue. Another 3 percent of TV revenue will go toward public access programming and other cable television needs. Verizon must also pay $1 million over five years for cable-related investments and provide cable TV for schools, libraries and fire stations.

I don’t know what “cable television needs” and “cable-related investments” are, but this sounds like extortion. I don’t mean to get too Techdirt here, but any time someone says, “We have to protect the consumer by regulating a level playing field”, I hear “The companies that give large donations to my re-election campaign are NOT going to like this new competition.”

Special guest blogger

Meow. Hello! I’m Biscuit, the official Complaint Hub cat. I have a little story to tell you. Last Thursday, I was wandering around the house, hungry. I thought I’d make some noise so someone would feed me, but that didn’t work. Those two people who live in my house were nowhere to be found. People are always disappearing like that. Never around when your food dish needs refilling.

So I decided to go look for them, to make sure they weren’t hiding somewhere. I jumped up on the table, and . . . Oh! Something shiny! And string! I played with the shiny thing and the string for a little while. I love playing with string. It just never gets old.

Well, eventually it gets old. And I was still hungry. So I thought, why not eat the shiny thing? That seems reasonable. I mean, if I wasn’t supposed to play with it and then eat it, why would it be on the table?

It didn’t really agree with me, though. And it wasn’t satisfying at all. In fact, it was kind of pointy. I couldn’t really swallow it all the way.

I spent the next day whining about it so those dumb people would fix it, but they just ignored me. And then they disappeared for two days! No one was there to sit with me on the couch. And my neck hurt. If I’d had anything to eat in the last few days since that shiny thing, I would have left them a little surprise, let me tell you.

Finally they got back! But still, they ignored me. “Poor Bis,” they said. “What’s wrong, Biscuit?” They said. My dang neck hurts, that’s what’s wrong! Can’t you see that? But they couldn’t.  The next day, I was still hungry.  The people came home, and I could smell something delicious!  My stomach was growling.  They were cooking shrimp!  I rushed to the kitchen, meowing as best I could to let them know that I, too, would like some shrimp.  They didn’t give me any, though.  But they did give me some other food from a can, so I ate that.  The shiny thing kind of got in the way, but not too much.

Then, the people thought I was getting better.  I tried to tell them I wasn’t, but you know how people are.

Finally, the next day I’d had enough.  My neck really hurt, and I was really hungry.  That’s when they grabbed me and put me in that little box.  I hate that box.  Whenever I get in that box, I’m always somewhere I don’t want to be when I get out.  Sure enough, they opened the box, and I was at the vet!  I hate the vet.  You wouldn’t believe where she sticks a really cold thermometer.  And she put me in this strange, noisy machine, but I guess it wasn’t too bad.  It didn’t hurt.  But then, I had to go to a new place.  It seemed a lot like the vet, so I hid under a desk until they made me come out.

After that, they took me into another room, and they shaved my ankle!  The nerve!  I don’t remember too much after that.  I’m home now, though.  I think I’m going to stay under the couch this week, though.  That seems safest.