Short fuse

Police officers in Massachusetts are required to pass a hearing test to get on the force. But there's clearly no test for tone-deafness in Peabody, where a new police contract gives time-and-a-quarter pay to officers who work on Sept. 11. Even in New York City, where 23 police officers perished in the Sept. 11 terror attacks, there is no effort to give public safety personnel a paid holiday. Sept. 11 is a day of mourning, not an excuse to cadge some overtime. If the Peabody City Council can't recognize how unseemly this appears to the nation, it should at least take pity on local taxpayers and reject the contract on fiscal grounds.

Local Republicans are trying to find a way to tie Governor Patrick to their favorite new whipping boy, the grassroots organization ACORN. Last week the party apparatus sent out an ominous-sounding e-mail titled "Gov. Deval Patrick has tie$ to embattled ACORN." The message reprinted a Boston Herald column noting that the Patrick administration gave a $33,000 grant to ACORN's Springfield office to help homeowners prevent foreclosure. But ACORN, which has 850 chapters across the nation, has received millions in federal grants, mostly for work on low-income housing, in Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico, even Arizona. So does that mean there are suspicious "tie$" between ACORN and . . . President Bush?

Americans are used to tipping, so much so that some unscrupulous employers tack "service charges" on to bills - and then deny their front-line employees the proceeds. The latest offender is Canyon Ranch, the luxury spa in the Berkshires. The Globe reported Thursday that the spa has agreed to pay almost $15 million to 600 massage therapists, waiters, hair stylists, and other workers. The spa imposed a standard 18 percent service charge, and its website declared that "no additional tipping" was necessary, but servers saw little of the money. The practice violated at least the spirit of state law, which forbids managers to take servers' tips. And as a matter of business ethics, companies shouldn't pad their bills by exploiting customers' willingness to tip.