Tag: government

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.

November 5, 2021 – What Do You Say When No One is Listening?

November 5, 2021 /

I woke up this morning and the first thing that I read was a story by a local city counselor that resigned. You can read the story if you like and I am not going to try and paraphrase it. But to boil it down, he resigned over philosophical differences and personal priorities.

As I read the quotes by the different parties, the situation sounded hostile. But, I had to side with Counselor Day. He was the one that took a stand for right and also potentially suffered the consequences. It is easy to see on social media people acting in an echo chamber of similar beliefs or under the mask of anonymity using a screen name. What takes courage is to act on belief.

I have in my office a book by Paul Harvey called “Our Lives, Our Fortunes, Our Sacred Honor” which I have had in my possession since I was a in middle school. It was written in 1956, my book was printed for the bicentennial in 1976 and is about the risk this countries’ founders took by backing what they thought was right. It reiterates that the risk of publicly supporting independence was a potential death sentence. But even more so, most of the people that the book chronicles lost everything for what they believed.

I want to say that this book was probably ‘rah-rah’ patriotism. But, to me it is much deeper than that. If you have ever read the the story “Who Moved My Cheese?’ by Spencer Johnson. It is a cute, short story with a deep moral message about embracing change. Paul Harvey’s story is about people willing to stand on what they believe regardless of the consequences.

Let us not be fools and promote social suicide or even worse physical harm. You might believe that drowning cats is the best thing for the world because the kill wild birds and poop in your flower beds even though the neighbor owns the cat. Every action has consequences. What I am promoting today is having the courage to speak your beliefs and act accordingly. That also means tolerating other’s who let the ‘freak flag fly’. The anarchist non-aggression principal should apply here. Anything that does not harm others should be permissible.

With that disclaimer in place, we can get back on track. We all act differently when alone or within a close circle because the same behavior is inappropriate in all circles. It is knowing and understanding those boundaries along with the charge of presenting genuine self in situations that matter. I can’t say the number of business meetings I have left with the quote “Anyone have any further questions or comments?” to have silence. That is followed immediately by gossip and opinion.

It is unfortunate that my experience has led me to be jaded and mistrustful. Many (many, many, many) times I have found leadership to be unqualified or just plain poor. There is a delicate balance between trying to be firm and helpful and being obstinate. I know that my personality starts to shut down when conflict starts to occur frequently and I begin to write people off as potential to work productively.

I probably have covered this in the past, but I was very open about my unhappiness in my previous job with my employer. It was that openness that led me directly to quitting. When discussing the options with my boss, it was clear that what I wanted and what was were never going to merge for both of us. It was scary and it was conflicting but it was pure freedom. Here is the thing about freedom, we always hear about it like it is all sunshine and roses. Freedom has personal responsibility and accountability associated with it. We have to accept implied risk in order to reap the ultimate reward.

One last story here. Yesterday I saw a tall, chubby individual wearing a knee length dress and bright yellow t-shirt walking in a downpour across the grass toward the crosswalk. At first, I thought that this was a frumpy, young girl that lacked fashion forward clothing. Since I was at the intersection, I was watching what direction this person was walking so that I could do the right thing as the driver. Upon looking more closely, I could see extremely hairy legs and a mullet cut and I recognized that this was a male wearing a dress. There were uniform dolls and rainbow patches on the backpack solidifying my suspicion that this wasn’t a wardrobe mistake, this was a statement.

At first I was sad. I don’t know why God created individuals that struggle with their identity or their sexual affinity. I also think about future hardship with life living in a ‘normal’ world. But, then I had a slight change of heart. How much courage must it take to openly be yourself? Do I have the ability to be my true self? Would I stand for who I am because I feel differently than the status quo? I like to say yes, but here I am, another keyboard warrior typing into the abyss.

End Your Programming Routine: As I sit here typing, this one has taken a long time. I think about all the threads of life sort of coming at me in the last couple of days. The news and observations with the theme of being genuine might be a hint that I need to pay more attention. There are some situations that I am not exactly happy about but I haven’t done anything to change or address them yet. My tendency is to hope to weather the storm and that things will get better. That largely is often not the case. So, I have to decide if it is worth the risk or pain to be genuine.