June 26, 2020 - Took Them Long Enough ....
Constant readers will recall that my mom got a big Economic Impact Payment, despite having been dead since 2018. And also that we returned it with a snarky note, because the tax lady said we had to. (She did not insist on the snark, but I added it for free.) Foolishly, I called that second chapter "Full Groundhog Achieved!"
But now I'm betting I was wrong about FULL groundhog. I just bet there is another scene about to play out. Because the IRS and the Government Accountability Office just figured out that all in all, they sent $1.4B to dead people. WOO HOO.
How much do you want to bet that they send me a letter asking me to return the money? Even though I did already? How much?
I did take pictures of the snarky letter and the voided check. Where did I put them, you ask? Such a good question. Today's soundtrack: Return to Sender.
Thanks, Elvis....
They are now using *their own incompetence* as a reason not to have a second round of relief fro people who need it.
ReplyDeleteFor decades - literally *decades*, at least since Reagan (who, like both Bushes, was also awful, and author of racist and elitist policies) - the Republican refrain has been "Government can't do anything right. Elect us and we'll prove it." Dotard is the apotheosis of that philosophy.
None of this is by accident. It proves their near-tautological point. Further immiserating the poor and minorities is the whole point.
To be clear: Government CAN do it right, or at least well enough. Obama faced a collapsing world economy in 2009 (thanks to the Republicans' having been in charge for 8 years), and his administration enacted policies that remedied the situation. Were they perfect? Did they go as far as I would have liked? Of course not. But they made things better, not worse - and did it in a way no other institution could. Only government - a functioning government - could have done it. (After it, it was a *functioning* private "Free Market" economy (SHORT-TERM PROFIT AT ALL COST!!) that caused the crisis and had to be bailed out. Who's gonna do that? The Kochs? Church charities?)
DeleteBut Obama brought us back from the edge. (He's looking better and better in retrospect.) And at the same time gave us a framework for getting to universal healthcare. Which latter the Republican have been working like mad to dismantle rather than expand. Even now - during a f***ing pandemic!
Once again proving that, to Republicans, making government look incompetent is the strategy. Not a bug; not even a feature. But the very *point*.
"Who's gonna do that?" (<--The "that" here refers to "bail out the economy". Which wasn't clear from my framing.)
DeleteMost of the time, your points are stuff I have thought before, but the argument that the Republicans are deliberately governing incompetently in order to make big government look bad is ... a new one for me. I've gotta think on it. Not disagreeing, just letting it percolate. We know I was slow to grasp the existence of Phil the Evil Scheduler. And I figured out Phil all by myself ....
DeleteDon't take my word for it: https://youtu.be/xhYJS80MgYA
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