As I am lying around and enjoying my semi-retirement on the beach in Punta Mita my daughter writes to me and says I have a notice from the IRS. We all just love those guys don’t we?
There is always something that seems to bite us when we seem to be at our happiest. After eight years of more dates than I would like to admit, the “perfect” lady came into my life. I’ll caveat that a bit, there are no perfect people in this world but when two people come together where the magnetism and energy are equal, it’s magic.
So here I am living in a daze of euphoria with a new companion and our government comes knocking. Since all my records are of course in the United States, my only option was to pull up stakes, say goodbye to my new love and beeline it back to North County. The IRS was giving me until June 5 to respond. They said I under-reported my income.
When we were growing up and trying to make something of ourselves coming out of the ‘60s and 70s, we took about any job we could to pay the rent. We didn’t live with our parents until the age of 26. But we always had some kind of an idea of what we eventually wanted to do for our life’s work.
Every job we took we knew that if we didn’t do a good job, we’d get fired. Basically it’s still that way in the real world. The unreal world is working for government. When you work for government you work for a union that doesn’t really have management.
Government union management is the politicians who keep passing laws and regulations at the behest of the unions that give the politicians money. But do the politicians pay the salaries? No! You and I do.
Government union employees don’t get fired. Since they can’t be fired for doing bad jobs, bad employees just get moved to another department somewhere, usually with a raise, and then maybe a couple of bucks are taken from their “bonuses.”
Bonuses. What are those? Does anyone get bonuses anymore other than government employees? Most people in the private sector are just happy to have jobs.
Just look at a few of the scandals making the rounds. The first one was Fast & Furious. The Attorney General is admonished with a contempt of Congress act. Who gets in trouble? A couple of low-level employees in Arizona who get moved to another department. Nothing has been resolved there.
Then there was the IRS scandal. Has anyone been fired? Nope. Lois Lerner, who was in the middle of it all, pleaded the Fifth Amendment, retired and now pulls a six-figure retirement.
Then there was the NSA spying along with the stealing of emails from James Rosen of Fox and Sharyl Attkisson of CBS. Clearly those were felonies. Has anyone been fired? Nope.
Then there was the Obamacare rollout, which has to be the worst of the worst with so many people hurt by it by losing their insurance, bad websites that cost 1,000 percent more to develop than if done by bid by the private sector. Has anyone been fired? Nope. Kathleen Sebelius retires and pulls a fat pension.
The president lied about you and I keeping our doctors and insurance policies and having our premiums reduced by $2,500 per year. All those promises earned four Pinocchios by even the New York Times. The president gets a pass.
The VA cluster screw up with countless veterans dying had its head guy, General Shinseki step down. Has anyone else been admonished? Nope. Then our President hands back the worst Taliban leaders while we are still fighting a war in Afghanistan. A trade for an Army private who deserted and may have collaborated with the enemy. Are there any repercussions for that? Nope.
I came racing home at some expense from my little piece of heaven where I could avoid having to deal with all the crap going on in our government all because some IRS employee thinks I owe the government money. This employee, who won’t get fired nor repay my expenses to bolt home and respond to their demand, simply added a zero to one of my 1099s. A copy of the correct 1099 corrected the mistake. But it came at my cost. The same employee is probably doing the same thing to many others but won’t get relieved of his or her job.
We are living in a weird, weird world. I only hope we can make it to the finish line naturally before idiots who can’t be fired blow us all up.
