Thursday, October 10, 2013
New York State's Ineptitude
We received an letter from the state indicating that we needed to register for a discount on taxes based on having incomes less than $500K (STAR exemption). It said that elderly need no do anything. Then it said we had to do something. So we called (518)457-2036, and the site gave out the wrong URL. Then we found the right URL, and this site was only marginally adept at gathering its data. And when we tried to enter my brother in law's data, it refused, claiming we had an open window doing the same thing, when in fact we didn't. What a pain. Almost as bad as the DMV
Monday, March 18, 2013
New York Times letter (rejected)!
Sirs:
Sen. Portman's recent conversion (NYTimes, 3/15/2013) brings to mind a fundamental flaw in our government which is rarely discussed.Who did he represent when advocating the Defense of Marriage Act, and who does he represent now? In both cases it appears as if he represented only himself. Our representative government has become a sham. Elected officials think they've been anointed. Where the Supreme Court members can exercise their bigotries as they see fit, elected officials are supposed to, in some sense, represent their electorate; voting in opposition to that electorate is assumed to take place only in special circumstances usually involving conscience. Representative democracy is being destroyed and voting now becomes a task of choosing the least harmful among the gaggle of supplicants grasping for power.
Sen. Portman's recent conversion (NYTimes, 3/15/2013) brings to mind a fundamental flaw in our government which is rarely discussed.Who did he represent when advocating the Defense of Marriage Act, and who does he represent now? In both cases it appears as if he represented only himself. Our representative government has become a sham. Elected officials think they've been anointed. Where the Supreme Court members can exercise their bigotries as they see fit, elected officials are supposed to, in some sense, represent their electorate; voting in opposition to that electorate is assumed to take place only in special circumstances usually involving conscience. Representative democracy is being destroyed and voting now becomes a task of choosing the least harmful among the gaggle of supplicants grasping for power.
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Things are just plain wrong in government
Today, for the fourth time, we went to the library searching for tax forms for the 2012 filing period. To our chagrin, again, they were not there. Not only the forms, but the appropriate booklets that contain worksheets that are required for filling out the forms, were missing. The librarian said that the IRS, when called, had told people to go to the library to get their forms. Too bad.
Heaven help you if you file your income tax late. Not only is the tax law incomprehensible, but it is not available for us to read, criticize, follow, etc..
So I called the IRS, and stayed on hold for 20 minutes before talking to a human, The booklet will be arriving within 10 days, they hope. Hurrah, a small triumph
How odd it is that the face of government, which is irrelevant to most of us during our daily lives, should be so poor that the few times we deal with it we feel that we’d rather have our wisdom teeth extracted without anesthetic. Consider the DMV. OK, don’t, it’s too painful. Rather consider the post office, where, at least in Forest Hills, doing business can be daunting.
You would think that the intrinsic inefficiencies of government bureaucracies would be offset by the recognition that these inefficiencies need to be hidden from the view of the general public who, after all, are paying for the whole mess. But even here,, where common sense should prevail, we have incompetence. With no one to blame, no one to take responsibility (and not just at the word level, but at the action level) the citizenry remains voiceless and toothless. If the government were a business, it would be bankrupt; but “too large to fail” has special meaning in this case, for who could bail it out?
Complaining, as I’m doing, is generally scorned as irrelevant unless accompanied by “suggestions” for curing the problem, but in this case, where suggestions have novenue, complaining at least is cathartic.
Heaven help you if you file your income tax late. Not only is the tax law incomprehensible, but it is not available for us to read, criticize, follow, etc..
So I called the IRS, and stayed on hold for 20 minutes before talking to a human, The booklet will be arriving within 10 days, they hope. Hurrah, a small triumph
How odd it is that the face of government, which is irrelevant to most of us during our daily lives, should be so poor that the few times we deal with it we feel that we’d rather have our wisdom teeth extracted without anesthetic. Consider the DMV. OK, don’t, it’s too painful. Rather consider the post office, where, at least in Forest Hills, doing business can be daunting.
You would think that the intrinsic inefficiencies of government bureaucracies would be offset by the recognition that these inefficiencies need to be hidden from the view of the general public who, after all, are paying for the whole mess. But even here,, where common sense should prevail, we have incompetence. With no one to blame, no one to take responsibility (and not just at the word level, but at the action level) the citizenry remains voiceless and toothless. If the government were a business, it would be bankrupt; but “too large to fail” has special meaning in this case, for who could bail it out?
Complaining, as I’m doing, is generally scorned as irrelevant unless accompanied by “suggestions” for curing the problem, but in this case, where suggestions have novenue, complaining at least is cathartic.
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