Where Sam doesn't play anymore ...Rick's Cafe Americain

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Prospect Heights

Café Shane - 794 Washington Ave.
Half Wine Bar - 626 Vanderbilt Ave.
Hibiscus - 564 Vanderbilt Ave.
Housebroken - 603 Vanderbilt Ave.
Prospect Perk Café - 183 Sterling Place
Ripple - 769 Washington Ave.
Sepia - 234 Underhill Ave.
Soda - 629 Vanderbilt Ave.
Sugarcane - 238 Flatbush Ave.

Boerum Hill

Brawta - 347 Atlantic Ave.
Flying Saucer Café - 494 Atlantic Ave.
Stir it Up - 514 Atlantic Ave.

Carroll Gardens

Bagels by the Park - 323 Smith St.
The Fall Cafe - 307 Smith St.
Main St. Ephemera - 205 Columbia St.
Union Max - 110 Union St.

Cobble Hill

Brooklyn Industries - Smith & Atlantic
Cafe Kai - 151 Smith St.
HomeCourt Furniture - 286 Court St.
Lido - 200 Columbia St.
Naidre’s - 502 Henry Street
Micromuseum - 123 Smith St.
Video Free Brooklyn - 244 Smith St.
Videomania - 170 Smith St.

Park Slope

7th Ave. Kids Books - 202 7th Ave.
7th Ave. Books - 300 7th Ave.
Bierkraft 191 5th Ave.
Beacon’s Closet - 220 5th Ave.
Brooklyn Industries - 206 5th Ave.
Brooklyn Superhero Supply - 372 5th Ave.
Commonwealth - 497 5th Ave.
Community Bookstore - 143 7th Ave.
Cousin John’s Bakery - 70 7th Ave.
Gate, The - 321 5th Ave.
Girasol - 69 7th Ave.
Gorilla Coffee - 97 5th Ave.
Great Lakes - 284 5th Ave.
La Taqueria - 72 7th Ave.
Lucia - 272 5th Ave.
Ozzie’s - 57 7th Ave. and 249 5th Ave.
Red Hot Szechuan - 343 7th Avenue
Second Street Cafe - 189 Seventh Ave.
Southpaw - 125 5th Ave.
Tea Lounge - 837 Union St. and 350 7th Ave.
Two Boots - 514 Second St. 

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Department officials said they were preparing a news release and were waiting for Wal-Mart to pay the $135,540 before making the settlement public.

$135,540?! Way to make them dig deep, DOL.

Wal-Mart can’t claim ignorance—even though they did. The defining characteristic of Wal-Mart is its unmatched information management system. Every time a pair of tube socks is dragged across a register scanner the entire supply chain immediately feels the ripple. If an assistant manager in the Spokane cookware department farts, someone in Bentonville smells it and sends a memo back to Spokane. Wal-Mart rigorously monitors employee hours to optimize staffing levels (not to mention minimizes its health insurance costs). There isn’t even plausible deniability here. $135,540?! Maine fined Wal-Mart over $200,000 just a few years ago for the same thing - and that was for the violations in one state with only 20 stores.

Even if you want to argue that Big Brother doesn’t know everything, Wal-Mart knew:

A weeklong internal audit of 128 stores found 1,371 instances in which minors apparently worked too late at night, worked during school hours or worked too many hours in a day.

Wal-Mart claims the report was mistaken because it counted a holiday as a school day, but do you think Wal-Mart would conduct an internal child labor audit on a non-representative week? Neither do I. Wal-Mart is a repeat offender and the fine they have to pay is the corporate equivalent of a speeding ticket in Montana.

That however, is the second most appalling part of the settlement. Number one?

A provision also promises to give Wal-Mart 15 days’ notice before the Labor Department investigates any other “wage and hour” accusations, like failure to pay minimum wage or overtime.

To be fair, the NYT has run a correction because the article in the print edition inadvertently edited out a response from the Department of Labor. The spokesperson claims that the “15 days” provision only applies to child labor violations. I don’t believe the spokesperson—the article indicates that the reporter and the experts quoted in it were working off of a copy of the settlement agreement and I trust their basic reading comp skills. But let’s take her at her word and assume that is what the parties intended the contract to mean: it is still insane.

In the world of commercial contracts, this is known as “notice and opportunity to cure” provision. It is a standard way of preventing people from trying to invalidate contracts over small, easily remdied, technical breaches. This isn’t a commercial relationship, though. It is an agreement between a law enforcement agency and an accused violator of the law. This is the first I am aware that the cops needed to ask permission before they investigated. I assume this will become standard in all criminal investigations:

A search warrant will be executed in two weeks. If we don’t get a note from you assuring us that you currently have no crystal methamphetamine or crystal methamphetamine production facilities. If you happen to be making crystal methamphetamine, please correct this violation and send us a report of your plan to avoid such mishaps in the future.

Is that really how we want federal law enforced?

I have no idea how Wal-Mart pulled this off. OJ’s Dream Team lawyers are a bunch of ambulance-chasing hacks compared to the folks Wal-Mart is using.

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The Pentagon has turned a blind eye to this practice since at least the Vietnam War, when an Army reporter broke the story, and despite repeated internal investigations that have shown rampant improper practices has consistently refused to do the one thing that would ensure that this not happen: ban the insurance agents from the bases.  The most recent report, in May 2000, caused the Pentagon to appoint a commission, whose final report is due soon, but whose draft report, the New York Times reports, says banning the agents “is not an option.”

. . . barring sales agents from bases is not the solution, said Frank Keating, the former governor of Oklahoma, who is president of the American Council of Life Insurers, a lobbying group.

“Anything that is unethical or inappropriate should not exist, period,” Mr. Keating said. But “someone who is mature enough to fight and quite possibly die for their country,” he added, “should be freely able to decide how much and what kind of life insurance they should have.”

That argument does not satisfy people like Capt. James A. Shaw, commander of the Second Battalion’s 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment at Fort Bragg, N.C. In his experience, he said, the training that produces competent soldiers may make them vulnerable to a disguised pitch from a friendly agent in the classroom who is a veteran.

“It’s an environment where you do what you’re told,” Captain Shaw said. “They are learning stuff that will save their lives in combat. Those classes are the law.”

When the topic switches from weapons maintenance to personal finance, he said, “there’s no real reason to suspect otherwise."

These insurance companies and their agents are the scum of the earth, and the Pentagon is worse for not taking immediate appropriate action.  I wonder if there’s a class action lawsuit here . . .

Read the whole thing.

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The New York Times reports on the proud, firm stance that the residents of Beaumont, TX have taken against some far-left radicals who think that the name of “Jap Road” should be changed.

A group of Japanese-American race-baiters, whose numbers include the seditious veterans of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, are all up in arms because they think “Jap Road” is politically incorrect or some such nonsense.  One of these liberal pansies attempted to justify their position:

"We Japanese are often ignored, but we’re still individuals with feelings,” Ms. Tanamachi said in an interview, speaking with a thick Texas twang. “I felt I could not stand in front of my students and talk about values like dignity and respect and not fight this thing."

Does that namby-pamby bullshit even make sense?

But this here’s AMERICA, and we don’t let no furriners push us around. 

No, sir.  The Beaumonteans quickly retaliated with the cogent, persuasive, rational arguments that are the hallmark of Texas politics:

"I hear ‘Jap’ cars and ‘Jap’ bikes all the time,” Buddy Derouen, 69, a retired petrochemical worker who lives on the road, in the community of Fannett, said in a recent letter published in The Beaumont Enterprise. “Why not Jap Road?"

(hey, why not “Redneck Road”, or “Ignorant Inbred Racist Motherfucker Road?")

"We’re not here to bash the Japanese,” Wayne Wright, a retired petrochemical worker who is spearheading a movement to preserve the name, said in an interview before the meeting. “How can I be considered a bigot and a racist when I got a Puerto Rican son-in-law?"

("some of my best friends are Jewish!")

"If we change the name, we’re conceding to the idea that it was meant the wrong way - and it wasn’t,” said Ms. Wright, pointing to wood on her floor that she said had come from Mr. Mayumi’s house nearby. “We’re proud of the name of our road."

("And when I called you a ‘nigger’?  Well, I meant that the ‘right’ way, too.")

But the coup-de-grace was delivered by L. J. Bergeron, a retired pipe fitter and former gun shop owner who lives on Jap Road:

"If it’s offensive to someone, they should either move or stay away from here,” said Mr. Bergeron, 62, leaning on the Harley-Davidson parked in front of his home.

I’m so proud. 

 

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In order to encourage employers to continue providing coverage, the federal government is offering tax-free subsidies to companies who can show that their coverage is “as generous” as Medicare.  Of course, as the article also notes, the typical employer-sponsored plans currently is more generous than Medicare, which has a built-in “deductible” of out-of-pocket expenses before coverage kicks in.

One way to look at this is to say that the government is ensuring a minimum level of prescription drug care for all retirees, by subsidizing employers to “match” Medicare benefits.  A more realistic way to look at it, however, is as a government-funded “race to the bottom”.

Companies (particularly big companies) that were providing prescription benefits to their retirees greater than those provided by Medicare will want to take advantage of the subsidies and tax benefits.  If they can do so while reducing the amount they pay for retiree prescription coverage, so much the better.

There also is no incentive for companies (i.e., smaller companies who do not benefit nearly as much as big ones from the tax cuts and other policies of this administration) forced to reduce their benefits below what Medicare offers to attempt at least to supplement or complement Medicare:

Employers who curtail drug benefits could still try to help retirees by offering drug coverage to supplement or complement what Medicare offers. But the government would not subsidize such assistance.

According to DHHS figures cited in the article, 11.5 million retirees who would otherwise have received prescription benefits from employer-sponsored plans will now get their coverage either from Medicare directly or from government-subsidized plans.

It would seem, then, that the new Medicare regulation will have two primary effects: where employers had been providing benefits not equal to those of Medicare, there will be no incentive to continue providing such benefits: their retirees will be better off on Medicare, and they will be better off not paying for coverage.  Where employers already had been providing benefits greater than those of Medicare, the government will now pay them to do so—even if they reduce those benefits.

It should surprise no-one that the benefit of the new Medicare laws inures primarily to the benefit of large corporations, while screwing both a large segment of the retiree community and the embattled taxpayers, who will bear a far greater share of supporting our growing elderly population.  An inevitable collateral effect of this legislation will be the drafting of additional rules and regulations to govern Medicare subsidies, and (if any of this is to function properly) the expansion of the HSS bureaucracy.

What should surprise, even shock (and not just in the Captain Renault sense of that word) some people, is that this law—which increases government spending, grows the federal bureaucracy, further entangles the federal government in our private lives, and smacks of socialized medicine—is one of the “great achievements” of a purportedly “Republican” administration.

The crowning irony: in order to keep prescription drug costs down, the House just voted to allow Americans to import prescription drugs from other countries.

They can’t blame this one on the terrorists (can they?), so how do they justify such a gross departure from the fundamental tenets of their party?  Perhaps more importantly, how does the party justify its continued support of these curs? 

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