Bureaucracy

Two bright-red phones at the Verdugo Jobs Center in Glendale are direct lines to the state offices that manage unemployment insurance, the benefit that can be a lifesaver after a layoff. But because of record unemployment levels in the state, picking one up doesn't mean you'll get through any time soon. "Sometimes people call all day," said Carolyn Anderson, manager of the center.

Tens of thousands of jobless Californians, rejected for unemployment benefits of up to $450 a week, are awaiting action by a state appeals board swamped with cases, hindered by delays, mired in bureaucracy and tinged with scandal. Although the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board is supposed to decide within 30 days whether the state wrongly denied an individual's jobless benefits, less than 4% of complaints are finished by then, the U.S. Department of Labor says.

Restaurateur Jesse Gomez's plans to serve margaritas and agua fresca cocktails on the patio at his new Yxta Cocina Mexicana eatery in downtown Los Angeles are getting tangled in red tape. The upscale restaurant has a liquor license and permission for indoor alcohol service, but slinging booze on its outdoor terrace apparently will require more than an application to amend a city permit and the $2,015 that Gomez sent to cover fees.

After days of parading around her beefy black steer in the dung-scented August heat at the Colorado State Fair, Brandi Calderwood made the final competition. For months, the 16-year-old worked from dawn well past dusk, fitting in the work around school, to feed, train and clean her steer. But just before the last round, when the animals are sold, fair officials disqualified her.

For months, maybe years, hikers trekking along the muddy creek bed stamped over it, mistaking it for a large rock. But Daryll Hansen knew differently. The amateur paleontologist could tell the flat gray hump protruding from the dusty sandstone was a rare prehistoric gem: a 5-foot-long baleen whale skull left from millions of years ago when Aliso Creek in Lake Forest was underwater.

China usually doesn't like to air its dirty laundry. But when fighting a wily foe, in this case its own well-entrenched bureaucrats, the leadership isn't above a bit of guerrilla warfare. Recently, the China Youth Daily, a mainstream Communist Party newspaper affiliated with President Hu Jintao's power base, released an online survey that found more than 90% of Chinese were fed up with inefficiency and bureaucratic muddle.

What makes a martyr? Batul Abdul Hussein thought her son, Wesam Saleh, was one. On Feb. 13, 2007, as U.S. and Iraqi troops began enforcing a new security plan to quell violence in Iraq, the 25-year-old policeman left for his night shift. He never made it home alive. As his patrol rounded a curve in southwest Baghdad, Hussein said, it came under fire from U.S. forces who mistook the armed Iraqis rolling toward them in the dark for possible insurgents.

Driven crazy by U.S. immigration policy, Microsoft Corp. executives decided to drive some of their employees north. Unable to land enough visas for a third of the foreign-born engineers and computer scientists it wanted to hire -- many of them newly minted graduates of U.S. universities -- the Redmond, Wash., company opened a software development center just over the Canadian border last year. About 150 people now work in Vancouver. "Our immigration system makes it very difficult for U.S.

New federal sentencing guidelines designed to end the racially tinged disparity between prison sentences for powder and crack cocaine dealers went into effect a month ago, and so far more than 3,000 inmates have had their prison terms reduced. Dozens have been released, including at least 15 in California, but many others who should have been released have not. Attorneys involved in the process blame bureaucratic delays as well as opposition from the Justice Department.

The nonmobile, hard lump had been on my sternum (the bone in the center of the chest) for many months. As a physician, I had figured it was costochondritis -- an inflammation -- from years ago that had hardened with age. A CT scan, however, stated otherwise: "Consistent with metastatic carcinoma or lymphoma. . . . " That meant the lump was likely due either to a cancer that had spread throughout my body or to a cancer of the lymphatic system, which manifests in different locations.