Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

The ‘time tax’ of Social Security

Posted: August 24, 2021 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

Over the past few months, I have tried and failed to get a check from Social Security, a system I’ve paid into for 52 years.

It’s rare that I agree with The Atlantic, but a story in the magazine caught my attention. In a recent edition, writer Annie Lowrey described the “time tax” of the federal bureaucracy that angers and exhausts many Americans. See https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/07/how-government-learned-waste-your-time-tax/619568/

“Government programs exist. People have to navigate those programs. That is how it goes. But at some point, I started thinking about these kinds of administrative burdens as the ‘time tax’—a levy of paperwork, aggravation, and mental effort imposed on citizens in exchange for benefits that putatively exist to help them. This time tax is a public-policy cancer, mediating every American’s relationship with the government and wasting countless precious hours of people’s time.

“The issue is not that modern life comes with paperwork hassles. The issue is that American benefit programs are, as a whole, difficult and sometimes impossible for everyday citizens to use. Our public policy is crafted from red tape, entangling millions of people.”

I’m one of those entangled in that red tape. 

As I neared 70, I decided it was time to ask for my check. I tried to fill out the lengthy questionnaire on the website at ssa.gov. The questionnaire refused to accept my wife’s birthdate.

Therefore, I had to schedule a telephone appointment. The next available one was in two months. 

I spoke with a friendly fellow in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and I felt good about the conversation except that he told me I had to provide a marriage certificate.

Couldn’t he check with the IRS, where my wife and I had filed a joint tax return since 1979?

Nope, he told me. I had to get one from Chicago, where we were married. Knowing that Chicago is far from the most efficient city government these days, I momentarily wished for the days of Richard J. Daley.

The Cook County office, where Chicago is situated, told me it would take as long as 90 days and cost about $50. Fortunately, it took only about a month. 

I sent the document to my Social Security adviser, and all seemed to be going well until I didn’t get my check in mid-August as expected.

After several messages, I finally got a return call from my adviser. No one else could help me.

Alas, he told me, there was a problem with my application. I would have to start the process again. That process is expected to take two to four months. 

I guess I am a prime example of the “time tax” in inaction.  

One Line Reponses to Tweets From Under My Fedora

Posted: August 24, 2021 by datechguy in Uncategorized

I usually don’t spend much time on twitter so this post is going to be an exception rather than a re-occurring theme

First Dick Durbin his tweet:

the line:

Getting a false or stupid message out there for the sake of claiming it’s been said is part of the job description of such a person.

NPR

the line

Oddly nobody at NPR cried “cultural imperialism” at the time the institute was created

Jessie Kelly

https://twitter.com/JesseKellyDC/status/1428523932223774726

the line

Over the last few years many monsters have decided it’s safe to take off the mask

Ronny Jackson:

the line

The fall of Afghanistan is no danger to the people who own this administration.

Finally Chris Rufo

the line

CRT is all about empowering and enriching activists who are not otherwise employable,

Report from Louisiana: Get me Outta Here!

Posted: August 23, 2021 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – So many conflicting emotions and stories on my news feed this morning. It’s enough to make one just pull the plug, put the house up for sale, and move out to the most rural, off the grid place you can find.

On the one hand, JOY! It’s the first day of school! Precious back-to-school pictures fill my social media feed of little children with big backpacks and happy smiles.

On the other hand, I also see one post after another of cancelled festivals and events due to the Covid surge. New Orleans has cancelled JazzFest, again. Everyone worries about Mardi Gras – will it happen or not?  Many other small, local festivals are announcing cancellations: the KBON Music Festival, the Delcambre Shrimp Festival, and Festival Acadiens et Créoles was rescheduled to the spring. The Natchitoches Meat Pie Festival and the Scott Boudin Festival also cancelled. The list continues to grow.

But school is fine, apparently, as is packed arenas for music concerts, and sports events.

It doesn’t add up.

In addition to all of this, on a more local level, we had at least three homicides in Shreveport yesterday several more shootings on top of that, one high-speed chase, and one elderly woman was stabbed sixteen times in the face and neck.

We may have topped 60 homicides for the year here yesterday, and we still have four more months to go. It isn’t getting any better, we had no leadership, and nobody willing to do anything to stop this violence. Shreveport Mayor Adrian Perkins has posted nothing but Covid vaccination and information on his social media feed for as far back as I can stand to scroll; not a word about the daily shootings and killings.

Silence.

It all just makes you think. You know, last week we were in a small community and nobody got shot, stabbed, or tried to kill a policeman. We could take an evening walk through town, leave our front doors unlocked, and not worry about getting robbed or mugged. People in these smaller communities know each other, they go to church together, the family unit is tight. That’s not to say they don’t have their problems, they do. Many rural communities across our country have terrible drug problems, young people bored with nothing to do, and their own unique issues.

There is no Utopia.

But after yesterday’s bloodbath here, it does make one long for a quieter community.

I don’t know what the answers are, and I know that Shreveport is far from unique in its crime problems. All I know for sure is that an answer must be found. We spend a lot of time throwing blame and not enough time working for solutions, it seems. And maybe that’s all I’m doing here; I just know I no longer wish to live in this city where human life apparently has absolutely no value and our leaders are silent about it.

Pat Austin blogs at And So it Goes in Shreveport and at Medium; she is the author of Cane River Bohemia: Cammie Henry and her Circle at Melrose Plantation. Follow her on Instagram @patbecker25 and Twitter @paustin110.

More Quick Afghanistan Thoughts Under the Fedora

Posted: August 20, 2021 by datechguy in Uncategorized
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I don’t see why anyone is so surprised at the Biden Administration not caring about Americans trapped in Afghanistan or American equipment or those who helped the US being left behind in Afghanistan. It not like people willing to steal an American election from tens of millions of Americans are going to give a damn about American interests.

There have been a lot of jokes over the last several months about the Biden Administration being “Welcome Back Carter”. That comparison is increasingly becoming unfair to Jimmy Carter who at least didn’t give our enemies 10-40,000 hostages to play with.

A couple of days ago old friend Don Surber complemented Janet Yellen on quickly freezing Afghan assets abroad. While it sounds good let’s not pretend that the Taliban will not connect the ability of Americans to leave the country with the freeing of those assets.

It’s taken a few days but we’re now seeing media start to defend the Biden Administration on all of this. There is a cold calculation here that in the long run Americans won’t care about what happens there and or will believe the media’s new spins on it. Given what we’ve seen from the left over the last seven months I’m sorry to say this political calculation is likely correct.

Oh and you’ll note that I continue to use “Biden Administration” rather than “Joe Biden” because anyone who thinks he is actually in charge is as stupid as the Generals who decided on this policy.

Finally one of my favorite lines from C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters is this paragraph from letter 13 where Screwtape excoriates Wormwood for letting his “patient” be exposed to reality:

The characteristic of Pains and Pleasures is that they are unmistakably real, and therefore, as far as they go, give the man who feels them a touchstone of reality. Thus if you had been trying to damn your man by the Romantic method…you would try to protect him at all costs from any real pain; because, of course, five minutes’ genuine toothache would reveal the romantic sorrows for the nonsense they were and unmask your whole stratagem.

Right now there are a lot of woke college students, feminists and BLM activist who have been crying “oppression” who because of what is and will continue to go on in Afghanistan are getting a glimpse of what actual oppression, actual pain, and actual suffering is and where they actually sit on the “Oppression” scale. It’s also a bit of a hit to those who regularly scream “Islamophobia” because people are seeing that such a “phobia” of radical Islam has a solid basis for reality.

Whether this is a moment of realization of reality or a moment of anger that the value of their victim status will depend on the individual, but given the rampant narcissism of such folks I suspect the latter will greatly outnumber the former.

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