Monthly Archives: July 2008

May HR 6068 Die In Committee

This entry was posted in Government on by

Surely, surely if government has any role in inspecting hotel rooms for bed bug infestations it is a local role.
representative butterfield, d-North Carolina, introduced legislation to authorize grants to states to fund bed bug inspections: the Don’t Let the Bed Bugs Bite Act of 2008.
I checked, the bill was introduced on on May 15 not April 1 and:

The bill would create a grant program in the Department of Commerce and authorize $50,000,000 in each of fiscal years 2009 through 2012 for giving these grants to states.

Interestingly it appears that a number of the findings listed in this bill may have been taken from Wikipedia…with a little laxity. For example;

  • Bill: in a study of 700 hotel rooms between 2002 and 2006, 25 percent of hotels were found to be in need of bedbug treatment
  • Wikipedia: The Steritech Group, a pest-management company based in Charlotte, North Carolina, claimed that 25% of the 700 hotels they surveyed between 2002 and 2006 needed bedbug treatment.
  • Bill: bed bugs possess all of the necessary prerequisites for being capable of passing diseases from one host to another.
  • Wikipedia: Bed bugs seem to possess all of the necessary prerequisites for being capable of passing diseases from one host to another, but there have been no known cases of bed bugs passing disease from host to host.

There’s more if you are interested. I wonder which pest control company wrote this up for the good representative who is surely more capable than this…
Yea, bed bugs appear to be nasty little creatures but it strikes me that a few more well publicized damage awards to folks who get bit in hotel rooms would be a lot more effective than blowing away $50,000,000/year which, yes, the gov doesn’t have anyway.

Via The Agitator.

Friday Ark #198

This entry was posted in Bird Blogging Cat Blogging Dog Blogging Friday Ark Invertebrate Blogging Pet Blogging Pets Weekend Cat Blogging on by

We’ll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and….?

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Oxymoron of the Day

This entry was posted in Democracy Government on by

In the best of all possible worlds, a wise Congress would figure out just which technologies will work best, and how they can be implemented most efficiently. (Ed: emphasis mine)
The Greenback Affect, Bill Mckibbon, Mother Jones, May/June 2008

It’s an article that just keeps on giving and perhaps I’ll come back to it over the next week or so either in part or at length.

Do you think this guy might be a big fan of a centrally planned society of robots…?