New Jersey Man Ordered to Reimburse State $15,000 in Unemployment Benefits He Never Received

I am always fascinated and appalled by Kafke-esque bureaucratic nightmares that governments always seem so creative at dreaming up.

Bill Woodward was told by N.J. he had to pay back
$15,000 in unemployment benefits he never received.
Photo by Russ DeSantis, N.J. Star-Ledger.  

The latest case centers around a guy named Billy Woodward of New Jersey. The State of New Jersey was demanding he repay to the government $15,000 in unemployment benefits he incorrectly received.

The only problem? He never received $15,000 in unemployment benefits or any other kind of government assistance and he could prove it, according to the Star-Ledger in New Jersey. 

Woodward did collect $642 in unemployment benefits in August, 2013, but that was legit, since his employer laid him off briefly because of slow business.

Woodward apparently tried repeatedly to straighten the whole thing out only to be repeatedly rebuffed. The state even took away a $3,793 tax refund because the state said he owed the money, wrote Karen Price Mueller, who writes the Bamboozled consumer column for the Star Ledger.

Of course this all got fixed when Price Mueller, that pesky reporter, started poking around and asking questions about the case at the New Jersey tax offices. Nothing like bad press to make a government stop torturing people.

The Star Ledger reported that Department of Labor spokesman Brian Murray said the problem stemmed from a data entry error, which snowballed when nobody corrected it and Woodward couldn't get through to anybody to get them to correct the issue.

OK, data entry mistakes happen, that's perfectly understandable. But my cynical self can't believe for a minute in all the paperwork and calls that went back and forth between the state and Woodward, somebody didn't discover the problem and fix it.

No, I think some loser in the government made a mistake, and rather than get in trouble, decided on an elaborate stonewall effort, hoping Woodward would just go away and shut up already.

This seems especially likely since Price Mueller has reported on similar problems in the New Jersey tax and labor departments before.

The scary thing is I wonder how many people do give up and pay, rather than keep fighting for money that is legitimately theirs and not the government's.
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I know most state government workers are dedicated, honest and hard working, (really!) but there's GOT to be a better way to weed out the horrible ones, no?

As Pothole Season Peaks On Roads, Two Photographers Have Awesome Fun With the Scourge

While I was driving around yesterday here in Vermont, I ended up with a headache from bouncing into up and over all the potholes and frost heaves left for us from a cold, changeable, schizophrenic winter.

A photo from the Luciano/Ficca
"My Potholes" series.  

It's been a wild winter in much of North America and city streets throughout much of the United States and Canada are showing it.

I wish I had a penny for every tire, suspension, shock absorber or alignment screwed up by running over the zillions of large, growing and multiplying potholes out there.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Two photographers, David Luciano and Claudia Ficca did just that, roaming the streets of New York City, Los Angeles, Toronto and Montreal using potholes as a creative muse for all kinds of fun scenes.

Their project is called "My Potholes"  Nothing is photoshopped, according to the pair. They meticulously planned out the scenes, models, wardrobes and props.

This whole project reminds me the time a number of years ago when the "Pothole Bandit"  um, terrorized Burlington, Vermont, near where I live.

The bandit, fed up with all the potholes in Burlington during a tough winter, decided to get back at the city for its perceived lack of repairs by planting trees in the potholes.

Another image from the "My Potholes" series.  

In any event, you can ponder the Pothole Bandit and the "My Potholes" photo series while the mechanic fixes your pothole damaged car.

We All Love A Head, Neck Massage: A Video For a Monday Smile

In a video taken last year in Slovenia, Silver the Husky enjoys a head and neck massage. Because we all do. And Silver's smile is infectious and we all need that. So enjoy.

Technology and Wildlife: Pelican Learns To Fly With a GoPro

OK, this video is basically a GoPro camera commercial, but it's too fun to resist.

Apparently, a young pelican was recently abandoned on a Tanzanian beach by the rest of a flock after a storm.

A nearby wildlife refuge took "Bigbird" in so he could recover. They also attached a very small, lightweight GoPro camera to him as he took is first flight after learning to do so.

Here's the result. I kind of wish I was up there with him:

Pinnacle Video Of Bad Taste Is Your Sunday Laugh Of The Day

Hat tip to the blog Nothing To Do With Abroath for finding this gem:

A scene from the most, um, incredible
Beatles medley video ever made!  

It's a 1978 video of Italian singer and dancer Raffaella Carra doing a Beatles medley. That doesn't sound to exciting on the face of it, but you have GOT to watch the video, below.

I'm a connoisseur of camp and extremely bad taste and this video is an absolute masterpiece.

The set designs are enough to induce epileptic fits in everybody who sees it. I showed the video to my  husband, Jeff, a highly regarded theater set designer.

He seemed stunned into silence at the spectacle, but said it's like somebody did a parody of the late 1970s. "It's so right, it's wrong," Jeff said.

Actually, the dancers in the "Hey Jude" segment near the beginning of the video look like they're all having epileptic fits, but it does appear they are enjoying the experience, so that's good.

I don't know much about Rafaella Carra, other than she is very popular in Italy and in Latin America. She's probably really talented, but since good taste was in short supply in the late 1970s, I think she suffered from that shortage here.

This video, however, would be a great remake for a drag queen. I think it would work wonderful in that context.

The "Obla De Obla Da" segment is also a highlight, with elements of Charo and Abba thrown in, and a giant open mouth face in the background about to happily eat our Rafaella as a nice midday snack.

Raffaella Carra stuns, I think, in her
1978 Beatles medley video.  

The walrus faces and tusks that decorated the groin and hip areas of the male dancers is a nice touch.

Even more dramatic is the next segment. The song "A Hard Days Night" is performed by  naked male dancers covering their privates with bowler hats. Get it? A Hard Days Night? Ha!!

Toward the end, we go back to "Hey Jude" and the Abba influence comes back. The dancers really out-Abba Abba.

You have to see this for yourself. It's a work of art. Watch:

Stupid "Zero Tolerance" Snags Two More Youths, Despite Waning Popularity Of Practice

There's still way too many adults in positions of authority, like at schools who have zero understanding of nuance and circumstances, so they cling to zero tolerance policies because they can't think for themselves.

If a kid doesn't realize his father left a knife
in his car, and his son drives the car to school not
knowing the knife is there, should we consider the
kid a criminal?  

The first in is Clarksville, Tenn., where David Duren-Sanner, 18, drove his father's car to school, and didn't realize a knife his father used was in there.

The school decided to randomly search the car and found it.  Sanner got in trouble.

And it would have been fine if he got in a little trouble. After all, he could have looked through the car to see if anything not allowed on school property was there.

Maybe give him a half hour of detention after school and a stern lecture, something like that, since he really didn't mean any harm.

But oh, no.  School district officials can't think for themselves, so they gave him a 10-day suspension, 90 days in so-called "alternative" school, and had police charge him with criminal possession of a prohibited weapon.

All that would probably have screwed up his chances for college, and by extention a good job and a successful life.

Because it's always important to ruin a kid's life for a minor, inconsequential infraction.  It would have been too much work to investigate and ask questions, to see whether this was a major school threat that warranted extreme action to protect students, or what turned out to be reality in this case, a very minor, dumb (maybe) mistake by an 18-year old.

I guess since the school administrators are as far as perfect as a human can possibly be, they expect the kids to be absolutely perfect, as sort of a counterweight.

Trying to demonstrate they do understand nuance, the school, in the face of an appeal and really bad local publicity, they reduced his time in alternative school to 30 days. Oh how big of them!

I've seen news stories in Google searches of backlashes to this kind of zero tolerance policy going back to at least the year 2000. But the practice remains entrenched in many school districts.

Many other school districts have plenty of smart, dedicated administrators and teachers who want the students to succeed. To me, the ones that cling to zero tolerance policies are just lazy, dumb and don't give a damn about the students. Which really sucks.

In another really stupid case, a 13 year old boy in the Chicago area is facing a felony charge of battery to a police officer.

If a 13-year old kid throws a snowball and it hits
 a cop in the arm, but doesn't injure him,
should that kid be considered a felon?  

So what did he do? Hit the officer? Try to grab his gun? Kick him?

Worse, at least in the eyes of police and the local school district. The kid threw a snowball, which hit the arm of a police officer who was sitting in a cruiser with an open window, according to the Chicago Tribune. 

Yes, yes, of course it's wrong to throw snowballs at police. The kid deserved a good talking to, and maybe some other in-school punishment?  But a felony?

A few people support this. One area resident was quoted as saying that if the kid got away with the snowball at age 13, he's shoot somebody with a gun at age 16 or 17.

If (the boy) had gotten away with it, who's to say what they'd do next," DNAinfo.com quoted local resident and educator Ray Fields.

Um, that's why you punish the kid now at a level that fits the crime. And if for some reason that didn't sink, punish him worse the next time he does something wrong.

If you wreck a kid's life at the very first, modest infraction, why would he stop doing worse things? If you take away his future, what's the point of following the rules and going for success using that route? He might as well just be a criminal,  as you labeled him when he was 13.

I'm sure society will thank you for that, Mr. Fields.

And you have to look at the kid's history. The boy supposedly had never gotten in trouble for anything until this.

Here's a message to Mr. Fields and any other educator who regards kids as a dangerous enemy, deserving to be locked up: You're harming this country and its future every bit as much as criminals who do use guns.

Bored Kids Wows Costco Shoppers With Piano Skills

Most young boys become bored out of their minds when their parents drag them off to Costco to shop for gallon jugs of mayonnaise, 120-packs of toilet paper or whatever.

The Costco piano playing kid.  

But in a 2011 video that is just now going viral, one kid found a way to occupy himself while his parents were seeking deals, Deals, DEALS!!!!

He found a piano, and started playing.

Note to piano playing kid: The hat's a nice touch, too.

Sorry for the vertical video syndrome (You YouTubers have GOT to stop that!) But it is worth seeing what the kid came up with: