What astonishes me about this document is that at no point in the sequence of events that led to its creation, from the first inkling of an idea in the first politician’s mind that taxing people to import and export stuff might be a good idea, to the idea that different items might be so taxed differently depending on what type of item they are, to the bureaucrat who idly put screws in a different category to bolts, to the customs official who disagreed with his colleague about whether this thing here is a screw or a bolt, to their boss who referred the problem to his boss, to the committee that held the meeting about what to do about the problem of distinguishing screws from bolts, to the middle-manager who wrote “TODO: get Bob to work on Bolts doc” in his notebook, to Bob who typed the first outline and draft, to the junior researcher who phoned around hardware stores and looked on Wikipedia trying to find out if there was a standard way to distinguish bolts from screws, to the senior researcher who compiled the information from the standards bodies, to the illustrator who carefully produced the line drawings, to the editor and proofreader and typesetter, to the overseers of checks and balances and working practices and publication guidelines and equality and grammar and spelling, to the techie who typed the command to upload the document onto the website, AT NO POINT did any of these people involved directly or peripherally in this document’s creation STOP and say, “WHY THE FUCK am I bothering with this pointless shit? Has my life really come to this? I should quit this pathetic and counter-productive job and go and pack bags at Walmart because, frankly, it would make the world a better place.”
Why anyone wouldn’t rather chop off their own head with a blunt hatchet than engage in trade with the United States and be forced to deal with these complete clowns is beyond me. That phrases like “new and creative programs Customs has undertaken” and “benefits to the trade community” can appear in documents written by these people without the universe imploding from the pure logical contradiction involved is a plain fluke of the laws of mathematics.
The sheer waste of human life on display here makes me want to weep.
I was going to agree with you about the waste of life the production of this document shows then I had another thought – two, actually.
1) I never thought I would laugh out loud at a document bearing the seal of the US Department of Homeland Security, but I have now. And
2) While the people who produced this are working on such ‘important’ documents they are are not doing anything worse. Their judgement is extremely suspect so I don’t want them contributing to any task which I might think meaningful. They could do so much more harm than this – be grateful.
Along the same lines. The rather hopeless company Scandinavian Airline Systems just received an indictment from the EU covering 70000 pages.
http://e24.no/naeringsliv/article2241212.ece
Isn’t it possible to be a little more to the point?
Marjory M: (2) is an excellent point! Lars: ouch. I wonder if the production of all that paper will count towards the airline industry’s carbon emmissions…
Rob, please note:
1. Production of paper from wood will lead to some carbon emissions, the amount depending on the efficiency of the factory.
2. Cutting down a tree in a forest will make that forest absorb more CO2. This is because old trees does not absorb as much CO2 as their younger siblings. Leaving an old tree in the forest to die actually releases all the CO2 it has collected during it’s lifetime. While it dies it hinders new trees in growing up and absorbing CO2.
Thus, as long as SAS keeps this paper in their archive and do not burn it, they should actually get an increase in their quota. (If the only other option was to leave the tree in the forest to die).
A cannot fault your reasoning, Lars!
Despite its length and bulk, the document fails to properly differentiate between Bolts and Set Screws from my Engineering training. (It might not apply in America, though).