Tag: correcting mistakes

May 11, 2023 – Think Your Government Doesn’t Make Mistakes… Think Again

May 11, 2023 /

Approximately two years ago, we received a letter that our kids were entitled to assistance (food stamps). I actually threw the letter away because I thought the whole premise was ridiculous. Supposedly, it was to mitigate access to food during the pandemic school year.

The first problem with the situation was that my kids should be eligible for assistance. The second part was that all of the lockdowns and the entire school year at home was a year past. So, tell me why I wouldn’t think that was anything other than ridiculous. Sure enough the card arrived in the mail two weeks later and it had about $1400 on it. You can read about it here.

Follow-up from that. We spent the money. We used it to buy food when we went on our family Thanksgiving trip to Houston. At first, I didn’t want to accept something that I didn’t feel was necessary. Once I got into my headspace that I also paid $10,000 in additional taxes to the state that year plus getting audited and paying a lawyer, I put those feelings aside. Mistake or not, I have reconciled that I pay a lot more than I take. In fact, I take almost nothing from the system.

Low and behold, we got another Electronic Benefits Card a week ago. This time it was about $400 in value. I suppose that I am not opposed to taking advantage of situation, but it does start to get disheartening that the state really has no discretion on qualification of benefits. This is what I would characterize as government waste; indiscriminate doling out of money.

If you take those lines, then you will probably understand that this was actually a mistake. My wife sent me a link to a story that said that there were a number of people that mistakenly received assistance. Once the state realized it, they took all the money back rendering some cards, like my son’s to be useless.

Hooray for government, right? You guessed it. Wrong. Aren’t there checks and balances in this process? Do they not have subject matter experts for policy and ample resources (people) to execute something properly? I have to believe that this process took a significant amount of time and effort. Finding someone to print the materials and mail them out only to find out that they made a mistake after the fact has to be something majorly wrong in the process.

I know how these things probably went. Some sort of database report was executed and that is what translated to the wrong results. What failed was the validation of the data and the quality check of the process. Mistakes happen and the government is not immune to them either.

Where I really wanted to go is that the government is always pretty quick to swing a fist. Meaning, the stance is always they are right. Ever try to re-title a car without a complete bill of sale trail? Trust me, your life is living hell trying to get previous sellers tracked down to rebuild a paper trail that is absolutely irrelevant. Trust me, only citizens have to go through the run around. Dealers don’t have to do that.

But more so than that, the government will reluctantly admit mistakes when there is no other options, particularly financial ones or high profile losses in court. Sometimes that doesn’t stop them either. For instance, I have heard no apologies for ruining peoples lives for only permitting essential jobs during Covid. I have heard justification for doing what they did, but no apologies.

The main point with this whole post is not to rail on government. I do enjoy doing so, but that you should use critical thinking when getting notifications about something they think is wrong. Just because the IRS sends you a notice doesn’t mean that they are right. You have to weigh the cost of the fight into the equation. When dealing with the government, there are no moral victories either so it simplifies the variables in the decision making.

Probably every other year I get a notice from the IRS or the Oregon Department of Revenue. After consultation with our attorney, often the resolution is to pay the difference. At $200/hour it doesn’t make a lot of sense to fight a $400 bill. But, I can also tell you that we have gotten letters saying that we haven’t paid for the year and a $10,000 bill is a different story when we have.

Along those lines, it really pisses me off that I have to have an attorney and pay more money to prove that I have already done the right thing. Whereas I know people that haven’t bothered to file taxes for years and they got no hassle whatsoever. This is not to say that the government was going to get anything out of if but that they will go after the people that they will. Dropping it.

End Your Programming Routine: Don’t be a zombie. Don’t fold because you feel you have no choice. Do analyze the situation and make moves that make sense. Do seize the opportunity when there is one. This is the definition of being an individual.

October 5, 2020 – Have you heard of the ‘Hairy Armpit’ Theory

October 4, 2020 /

I guess that it is a theory. I will credit a former co-worker with the idea. The basic idea is that you leave something blatantly wrong so that people will focus on that problem and not dig in too deep to look for other problems. So, to bring the whole picture around, in North America you would not generally expect to see a woman have a hairy armpit. Therefore, you would not look for any additional flaws because this one is so evokes such a strong perception.

My ‘Hairy Armpit’ is the spelling of Ressurection versus the real spelling of Resurrection (largely because the proper spelling was already taken). Nobody has ever made any comment on it and I acknowledge in my About page the misspelling. Going back to my ‘Toolbox Fallacy’, it has been my intent to move this blog to a real domain and do proper marketing, etc but I haven’t because well, you know why (see above).

However, I found another situation that was not known to me, more akin to walking around with your zipper undone. I really liked the idea and concept around the word Floricane. I have never searched for my own blog to connect, only sent links out for people to connect. My son was trying to setup a subscription to follow and I noticed that Floricane in the header has been misspelled for nearly a year. I thought that I checked that multiple times, even doing web searches related to the other domains using the term.

How embarrassing. That is sophomoric level editing and presentation and here I thought that I was being sophisticated and clever. I guess that the only thing to do is correct the problem and move on to promote somebody else’s clever concept of the ‘Hairy Armpit’ theory.

I haven’t talked about faith in a while, but this week’s message has a poignant intersection. To go to a super high level, we need help as people where we can. To ascend to higher spiritual levels, we need to concern ourselves with the problems of others. I think that as a matter of principle, it is our responsibility to help people by pointing out their ‘Hairy Armpits’ (discreetly) because maybe they just don’t know about it or at least the cultural standards.

It may also be twisted logic but I think that to effectively help others, you have to keep working on yourself. Just like the foster parent commercial, you don’t have to be perfect to be a foster parent, simply willing to try. However, the moment you have it all figured out is the moment that you have failed. Keep working to move past your issues, do the best you can to correct your errors and help people to the best of your ability. Those are principles that regardless of your beliefs will make a better world.