I agree that there is probably a lot of abuse and if catching some of the willful abusers helps keep mailing rates low, I'm for it. However, it sounds like some stuff like girlalive mentioned is excessive. They shouldn't be inspecting and differentiating to that extent. The folks that are including a sheet of paper in with a book aren't the abusers that are deliberately scamming the system and costing us all money. It's the people doing lots of online auction items that aren't media and shipping them all media mail that are probably the main real issue.

Plus, I don't like that the one who RECEIVES the mail gets charged the extra postage. It should be the one who SENT the mail who gets billed if anyone. Especially in situations like online auctions, you didn't have any control over how the shipper shipped the package. You just saw their shipping rate listed, saw that as acceptable, bid accordingly with that rate in mind, and paid them for your purchase. You didn't ask them to ship fraudulently. You didn't plan to pay extra. Sure, on some things you could just refuse it and let it be shipped back, but some times, it's something you really wanted/needed and can't send back now. Plus, that would be MORE drain on the postal service, to ship things, and then have them refused and have to ship them back to the sender. It would have been cheaper and easier to just deliver the package.

Poppajay- I definitely agree on the minimum wage thing. They should be paid a realistic wage and charged a realistic price for rent, utilites, food, toiletries, etc.

Twist- If it's optional, it's optional, that's not slavery. If it were slavery, they'd be denied basics like food, clothing, shelter, etc. or subject to punishment if they chose not to work. Opting out not qualifying you for extra perks is not the same as being forced at all.

Prisoners should take responsibility for their choices like the rest of us. If they want to say no to the undesirable job and not get whatever perks come from "good behavior", that's their choice. If the perks are worth it, that's their choice,too. It's no different on the outside. I personally choose to do an easy, non-dangerous, job, but I also choose to not make nearly as much money as someone who chooses a more demanding or risky one.

nutbastard- I totally agree that people are wrongly convicted on occasion and that we aren't in unanimous agreement on many of our laws that people are fairly convicted on. The enforcement and court system not being infallible is sad. But the laws being not loved by everyone is just democracy. That's how it works. If a majority of people think something should be illegal, well, it sucks to be the minority. You're stuck with what the majority deems acceptable and have to live within the laws the majority creates and keeps in place. Your only recourse is to work to change the laws, not to just violate them.

If you choose to violate laws you don't agree with, you choose to be willing to be pay the consequences. If I want to do drugs, I know full well that they are illegal. I can protest and vote and petition and work myself exhausted to try and get the laws changed to legalize drugs, but until I succeed at that, if I choose to use drugs, I know I'm choosing to be a criminal and choosing to go to jail if I get caught. I am responsible for my own actions. All criminals are.

All that aside, working for a living is not a bad thing. People either would have or should have been working on the outside. Working is not a punishment. Working is an expected part of being a productive member of society. If you intend to have things like a place to live, food to eat, utilities, and possessions, you are expected to work for them. Criminals shouldn't be exempt from that.

I don't mind sharing a little of my pay so that the gov't can take care of folks that are too old or too sick to work for themselves. I don't even mind temporarily helping out healthy folks that have fallen on hard times. I do mind able bodied folks sitting idle on my dime because they chose to violate the law.

I personally think that all prisoners should be forced to have a job while inside, either a purely prison job (growing or preparing food for the inmates, laundry, cleaning, etc), or for a contracted outside company. It's good practice for life on the outside. Plus, criminals shouldn't be allowed to just sit around at the taxpayers' expense. They should be doing something worthwhile while they're on our tab. If they wanted more or better job options, they should have stayed on the right side of the law.

sidecar-jon, in the US at least, it's not slavery. There's nothing forcing the inmates to take those jobs. They are free to not opt into the work program and instead spend their time just sitting around bored. Many inmates choose to do the work to not only occupy their time, but earn money. I've known a couple of people that went to prison and they really looked forward to being able to get a prison job. It was a lot better than being broke or having to depend on family adding money to their prison cantine account and sitting around bored most of the day. It's no more slavery for those prisoners than it is for any of us on the outside. Most of us don't love to work for a living, but we do appreciate the opportunity to do so.

I've bottle raised a calf. I can't imagine letting a calf nurse on my own breast. Not for the gross factor, but for the risk of injury factor. A calf nurses WAY too roughly for a human. They suck with major force, even a sickly weak calf would probably be too much for a woman's breast. And the way they shake their head and rush you, ramming you to take the nipple. Nope no way. I might express breast milk into a bottle to share with the calf, but wouldn't let it just suckle.

I'm with you, Miss Cellania. They should just put up more stalls and have a single room. We don't typically have different restrooms in our home for different genders and it's not weird or gross.

In a lot of places here in my area, malls and stores and libraries and such have been putting in a male bathroom, a female bathroom, and a family bathroom. The family bathroom is for all genders and mixed gender groups (like a mom with a little son or a dad with a little daughter). I hear they are also a fairly comfortable option for transgender folks,too, since you don't need to pick male or female or be hassled about your choice.

Now, if Lautner is smart, he'll take the added publicity from the request making headlines and add to that publicity himself by doing some sort of legitimate push up contest fundraiser for the kids. Like go down to the hospital itself and visit the kids and challenge some other celebrities to a push-up contest and take "bets" and sell tickets and such and raise a bunch more than a measly 40 grand for the little ones. Lautner will look generous and still have his 40 grand settlement. The RV guy won't get any more free publicity off of it. The hospital will still get a big windfall.

Batman wants to bring criminals to justice, not to just be a vigilante.

Plus, since he doesn't kill anyone, the police and the mayor and the people of Gotham can be fully behind him. He's a unifying force. If he killed his foes, he couldn't have the unconditional support of the community. It's great for your little ones to idolize someone who's a caped crusader for justice, sort of a super cop with a mask instead of a badge, but harder to let them idolize someone who kills people without a fair trial. If you kill, even if they were "bad guys", the police have to arrest you and put you on trial. Batman doesn't have to deal with any of that. He gets to be the beloved hero and protector of the city he loves.

I think part of the phenomenon is because poorer folks feel closer to the risk of needing charity themselves, they see more neediness first hand on a more regular basis. Say you're a grocery store checker. You're going to see a whole lot more needy people going through your checkout line during your day, trying hard to afford even simple groceries. It keeps you constantly aware that there are people struggling to buy food. If you're say, a chemical engineer, you're less likely to come in contact with poor people daily and it's easier to feel more distanced from the scope of neediness out there.

I think the other thing to consider is that more well-off folks tend to do more structured giving. They may be less likely to be as generous to every little cause that comes to their door than poorer folks because they do their giving in a systematic way and in bigger chunks. Like the person who mentioned when they were going door to door fundraising for a local project and got less response from fancy houses, may be seeing the result of that style of giving. The folks in the fancy houses may give a BIG gift to one or a couple of charities close to their heart once a year or may have donations to their chosen charities regularly scheduled (like a monthly deduction). They actually plan and budget for giving. So even though the poor folks may have been more open to whipping a few bucks out of their wallet when you came door to door, it doesn't mean that they are necessarily more generous than the rich folks.

Also, wealthy people get solicited A LOT for donations. Especially if they are also business owners. They get hit up all the time. Since they can't afford to give generously to everyone that approaches them for a donation, they have to pick and choose and usually choose one or a handful of projects they REALLY care about and concentrate all their giving on those projects.

I used to give a little bit to lots and lots of causes. Especially when I was even broker than I am now (and I'm by no means rich, just fairly comfy). I didn't have enough financial cushion to feel comfortable with donating a big amount to any one cause or to be able to schedule a regularly scheduled donation. So if a charity happened to colicit me on a day that I was extra flush, I would almost always contribute a little. Now that I'm a little more secure, I focus on one main organization (Kiva) and give to them regularly. I may not put a buck in every charity jar or a handful of change in every kettle or buy a candy bar from every school kid anymore. It probably looks from the outside like I say "No" a whole lot more often, but I'm actually giving a lot more money.

I think folks that are being weird shouldn't be offended by it. The chances are good that they know they're weird. It's not going to shock them. It's probable that it had already occurred to them that they're not operating within what's expected. But if perchance they did think they were being odd, they should be informed. It's good to know who you are how others perceive you and how it fits in in the spectrum of society and to come to terms with that and be who you want to be.

Especially in reference to behaviors that are controllable and volunatary, there's nothing wrong with being weird and calling those behaviours weird. Like if you dress up in a wild costume or paint your house neon green or drive an art car with a thousand superman figures glued to it, you chose to do those things. It's not like being born different with something that's difficult to hide. It's not like being deaf or having a birthmark. It's something you knew wasn't what everyone else was doing and you chose that it makes you happy and you want to do it anyway. If you don't want to be weird, don't be. If you don't want to be called weird, don't be weird. If you want to be weird, be weird, be wildly, freely gloriously weird, but don't get all hurt by it or act offended by it when you're called out on it.

Purposefully avoiding calling things weird when they're weird is like the folks in the old Emperor's New Clothes tale not acknowledging that the Emperor was naked.

I don't think weird is bad at all. Weird is just that something is outside of the majority or expected norm. It's not saying that whatever the weird people or doing is even bad, just that it's different. And there's nothing inherently wrong with being different and nothing wrong with pointing out when things are different.

While places coming up with weird names for otherwise normal things is a bit annoying, she should complain to someone who is in charge of that sort of thing and has the power to change it, not the folks taking the orders and serving the coffee and bagels. They didn't name it "Venti". They didn't choose for cream cheese or whipped topping to be the default serving style. They don't have the authority to re-name it something sensible or change the standard recipe to be to your taste. If she was really that concerned with that stuff, she should have worked her way up the chain of command until she was in contact with someone who could actually do something about it or at least make meaningful note of her concerns. By being difficult to the server, she was just making their day less pleasant for no reason.

Plus, didn't her mother teach her the old "You get more flies with sugar than you do with salt." theory. If you're really super nice, you'll get a LOT better results than when you're not fun to deal with.