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The place where the world comes together in honesty and mirth.
Windmills Tilted, Scared Cows Butchered, Lies Skewered on the Lance of Reality ... or something to that effect.


Sunday, December 23, 2012

The Daily Drift

 southwestart:

Jeff Aeling
Cumulus Cloud with Virga
40 x 48 inches, oil
Cumulus Cloud

Some of our readers today have been in:
Doha, Qatar
Hanoi, Vietnam
Bekasi, Indonesia
Aquadilla, Puerto Rico
Belgrade, Serbia
Petaling Jaya, Malaysia
Waterloo, Canada
Bagkok, Thailand
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Cape Town, South Africa
Panama, Panama
George Town, Malaysia
Izmit, Turkey
Jakarta, Indonesia
Puchong, Malaysia
Phuket, Thailand
Lima, Peru
Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia
Minsk, Belarus
Manchester, England
Ampang, Malaysia
Ankara, Turkey
Dublin, Ireland
Bayan Lepas, Malaysia
Dubai, United Arab Emirates 
Sao Paulo, Brazil

Today is Festivus

 We are posting a minimum number of posts over the next few days so that the editors and staff can celebrate the various holidays and festivals occurring right now.  

Don't forget to visit our sister blog!

Today in History

1861 Lord Lyons, The British minister to America presents a formal complaint to secretary of state, William Seward, regarding the Trent affair.
1900 The Federal Party, which recognizes American sovereignty, is formed in the Philippines.
1919 Great Britain institutes a new constitution for India.
1921 President Warren G. Harding frees Socialist Eugene Debs and 23 other political prisoners.
1933 Pope Pius XI condemns the Nazi sterilization program.
1937 London warns Rome to stop anti-British propaganda in Palestine.
1939 The first Canadian troops arrive in Britain.
1940 Chiang Kai-shek dissolves all Communist associations in China.
1941 Despite throwing back an earlier Japanese amphibious assault, the U.S. Marines and Navy defenders on Wake Island capitulate to a second Japanese invasion.
1944 General Dwight D. Eisenhower confirms the death sentence of Private Eddie Slovik, the only American shot for desertion since the Civil War.
1947 President Harry S Truman grants a pardon to 1,523 who had evaded the World War II draft.
1948 Japan's Prime Minister, Hideki Tojo and six other collaborators are hanged for war crimes.
1950 General Walton H. Walker, the commander of the Eighth Army in Korea, is killed in a jeep accident. Lieutenant General Matthew B. Ridgeway is named his successor.
1967 U.S. Navy SEALs are ambushed during an operation southeast of Saigon.
1974 The B-1 bomber makes its first successful test flight.
1986 The Voyager completes the first nonstop flight around the globe on one load of fuel. The experimental aircraft, piloted Americans Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California after nine days and four minutes in the sky.

Non Sequitur

http://l3.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/gl2SxNkPYCFlwQfqu7X49Q--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9Zml0O2g9MTIwMDtxPTg1O3c9MzAy/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ucomics.com/nq121223.jpg

Audits of businesses for illegal immigrants rising

In this Friday, Dec. 21, 2012 photo, workers, from left, Aaron Roaf, Levi Wilson, and Jason Ray stack pieces of milled wood trim at Belco Forest Products in Shelton, Wash. The workers were hired after an audit by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Department resulted in the layoff of more than 20 workers for having suspect documents authorizing them to work in the United States. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reached its highest number yet of companies audited for illegal immigrants on their payrolls this past fiscal year. Audits of employer I-9 forms increased from 250 in fiscal year 2007 to more than 3,000 in 2012. From fiscal years 2009 to 2012, the total amount of fines grew to nearly $13 million from $1 million. The number of company managers arrested has increased to 238, according to data provided by ICE.
The investigations of companies have been one of the pillars of President Barack Obama's immigration policy.
When Obama recently spoke about addressing immigration reform in his second term, he said any measure should contain penalties for companies that purposely hire illegal immigrants. It's not a new stand, but one he will likely highlight as his administration launches efforts to revamp the nation's immigration system.
"Our goal is compliance and deterrence," said Brad Bench, special agent in charge at ICE's Seattle office. "The majority of the companies we do audits on end up with no fines at all, but again it's part of the deterrence method. If companies know we're out there, looking across the board, they're more likely to bring themselves into compliance."
While the administration has used those numbers to bolster their record on immigration enforcement, advocates say the audits have pushed workers further underground by causing mass layoffs and disrupted business practices.
When the ICE audit letter arrived at Belco Forest Products, management wasn't entirely surprised. Two nearby businesses in Shelton, a small timber town on a bay off Washington state's Puget Sound, had already been investigated.
But the 2010 inquiry became a months-long process that cost the timber company experienced workers and money. It was fined $17,700 for technicalities on their record keeping.
"What I don't like is the roll of the dice," said Belco's chief financial officer Tom Behrens. "Why do some companies get audited and some don't? Either everyone gets audited or nobody does. Level the playing field."
Belco was one of 339 companies fined in fiscal year 2011 and one of thousands audited that year.
Employers are required to have their workers fill out an I-9 form that declares them authorized to work in the country. Currently, an employer needs only to verify that identifying documents look real.
The audits, part of a $138 million worksite enforcement effort, rely on ICE officers scouring over payroll records to find names that don't match Social Security numbers and other identification databases.
The audits "don't make any sense before a legalization program," said Daniel Costa, an immigration policy analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank. "You're leaving the whole thing up to an employer's eyesight and subjective judgment, that's the failure of the law. There's no verification at all. Then you have is the government making a subjective judgment about subjective judgment."
An AP review of audits that resulted in fines in fiscal year 2011 shows that the federal government is fining industries across the country reliant on manual labor and that historically have hired immigrants. The data provides a glimpse into the results of a process affecting thousands of companies and thousands of workers nationwide.
Over the years, ICE has switched back-and-forth between making names of the companies fined public or not. Lately, ICE has emphasized its criminal investigations of managers, such as a Dunkin' Donuts manager in Maine sentenced to home arrest for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants or a manager of an Illinois hiring firm who got 18 months in prison.
Many employers also wonder how ICE picks the companies it probes.
"Geography is not a factor. The size of the company is not a factor. And the industry it's in is not a factor. We can audit any company anywhere of any size," Bench said. He added ICE auditors follow leads from the public, other employers, employees and do perform some random audits.
But ICE auditors hit ethnic stores, restaurants, bakeries, manufacturing companies, construction, food packaging, janitorial services, catering, dairies and farms. The aviation branch of corporate giant GE, franchises of sandwich shop Subway and a subsidiary of food product company Heinz were among some of the companies with national name recognition. GE was fined $2,000.
In fiscal year 2011, the most recent year reviewed by AP, the median fine was $11,000. The state with the most workplaces fined was Texas with 63, followed by New Jersey with 37.
The lowest fine was $90 to a Massachusetts fishing company. The highest fine was $394,944 to an employment agency in Minneapolis, according to the data released to AP through a public records request.
A Subway spokesman said the company advises franchise owners to follow the law. A Heinz spokesman declined comment.
Bench didn't have specifics on what percentage of fines come from companies having illegal immigrants on their payroll, as opposed to technical paperwork fines in recent years.
Julie Wood, a former deputy director at ICE who now runs a consulting firm, said she'd like to see the burden of proving the legality of a company's workforce go from the employer to the government. She'd like to see a type of program, such as E-Verify, be implemented with the I-9 employment form. E-Verify is a voluntary and free program for private employers that checks a workers eligibility.
"At the end of the day, the fine is the least of it," she said. "Usually the company will spend more on legal fees. But it is a huge headache for the company to lose workers."
Wood said she'd like to see the agency go after more criminal charges and focus on companies that treat workers inhumanely.

Random Photo

Worker formally reprimanded for excessive farting

A federal employee was formally reprimanded this month for excessive workplace flatulence, a sanction that was delivered to him in a five-page letter that actually included a log of representative dates and times when he was recorded “releasing the awful and unpleasant odour” in his Baltimore office. In a letter sent on Decenber 1oth accusing him of “conduct unbecoming a federal officer,” the Social Security Administration employee was informed that his “uncontrollable flatulence” had created an “intolerable” and “hostile” environment for coworkers, several of whom have lodged complaints with supervisors. The worker, a 38-year-old Maryland resident, reportedly submitted evidence that he suffered from “some medical conditions” that, at times, caused him to be unable to work full days. But a SSA manager noted in the reprimand letter that, “nothing that you have submitted has indicated that you would have uncontrollable flatulence. It is my belief that you can control this condition.”

A redacted copy of the letter was recently circulated among officers of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the union that represents the SSA worker. The SSA worker is pictured with his wife in the photo below, which apparently was taken at an amusement park. The employee is a claims authorizer at the SSA center that handles disability cases for the entire country. According to the letter of reprimand which is the least severe administrative sanction that can be levied against a federal worker the man was first spoken to about his flatulence during a May 18 “performance discussion” with his supervisor. He was informed that fellow employees had complained about his flatulence, and that it was “the reason none of them were willing to assist you with your work.” The supervisor referred the employee to a SSA unit for “assistance with what could have been a medical problem that was affecting everyone in the module.”


Two months later, on July 17, a second SSA manager spoke with the man “in regards of your releasing of bodily gas in the module during work hours.” The manager asked the employee if he could “make it to the restroom before releasing the awful and unpleasant odor.” She also recounted what appeared to be a prior conversation during which the worker suggested that he would “turn your fan on when it happens.” The manager recounted advising him that, “turning on the fan would cause the smell to spread and worsen the air quality in the module.” On August 14, a third administrator - a SSA “Deputy Division Director” - spoke with the worker about his “continuous releasing of your bodily gas and the terrible smell that comes with the gas.” The manager noted that the worker had said he was lactose intolerant and planned to purchase Gas-X, an over-the-counter remedy. The manager informed the employee that he “could not pass gas indefinitely and continue to disrupt the work place.”


Despite these repeated warnings, the man apparently continued to struggle with his flatulence throughout the late-summer and fall. After stating that, “It is my belief that you can control this condition,” the author of the reprimand letter then noted, “The following dates show the time of your flatulence.” What followed was a log listing 17 separate dates (and 60 specific times) on which the employee passed gas. For example, the man’s September 19 output included nine instances of flatulence, beginning at 9:45 AM and concluding at 4:30 PM. The man was also accused of launching a trio of attacks on September 11. The letter’s author wrote that the employee’s conduct had been “discourteous, disrespectful, and entirely inappropriate,” and was worthy of a formal sanction, which is placed in a worker’s personnel files for up to one year. The reprimand, the manager noted, “is the least severe penalty available to impress upon you the seriousness of your actions and is necessary to deter future misconduct.”

Looping Bridge

looping bridge
This bridge that might have been designed by stuntman Evel Knievel lies in Sarajevo, Bosnia. It's called the Festina Lente Bridge--a name that means "make haste slowly." Amila Hrustic designed it for pedestrian use, so park your motorcycle before crossing.

High fructose corn syrup linked to diabetes

A new study by USC and University of Oxford researchers indicates that large amounts of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) ...
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The World's Largest Pizza


Five Italian chefs with big dreams and a whole lotta dough teamed up and broke the record for the world's largest pizza by creating this 131 foot, fifty one thousand pound behemoth.
Dubbed 'Ottavia', this mega-pizza broke a record which stood since 1990, and thereby earned a name that pays homage to first Roman emperor Octavian Augustus.

Animal Pictures

loverofbeauty:

Shaman DANCING, by Wojtek Kwiatkowski.