Posted on 10/09/2013 6:26:10 AM PDT by Kaslin
I can think of one reason to end the federal shutdown: There are a lot of stupid people now roaming the streets. The Feds, however, do not have a monopoly on idiocy. Bureaucratic bumbling can be found wherever there's large government, even on the state, and yes, on the county level.
I know a thing or two about these things. Back in the early '70s, I was in Spain with my brothers Michael and Johnny; the three of us were attending a Spanish high school. As part of this arrangement, we had to handle all necessary requirements, uppermost being the requirement for patience dealing with the most incoherent bureaucracy ever visited on man. There was no problem Spaniards couldn't make worse by a factor of 10 just by tackling it.
Officially, we never attended school in Spain. Why? Because it was impossible for an American to register. Every couple of Saturdays, we would take the train to Madrid to visit the Ministry of This or Ministry of That (never offices, mind you, always "ministries"). We'd lug the folders with the ever-growing mountain of paperwork, in duplicate, triplicate, quadruplicate, and who knows why. After the prerequisite interminable wait, the paper pusher would examine the document carefully, harrumph where appropriate and then, pen firmly pinched between finger and thumb, perched ominously over the paper, he'd begin furiously drawing concentric circles in the air, and when the circling motion reached supersonic speed, he'd drop the pen to the paper and watch as first the paper was covered by massive circles of ink inside of which was placed a name so flowery as to make John Hancock blush with envy. Ah, the self-delusion.
That would be followed by the cannonade -- Bam! Bam! Bam! -- as the official stamp of the Ministry of Confusion pounded page after page. The official seal of approval now bestowed, we were instructed to proceed -- to the next ministry. Back to school, back to Madrid, back to school, back and forth -- until after several months, we finally surrendered and abandoned the mission, which is why none of us attended high school in Spain, in my case for three years.
But, oh, did we laugh at the insanity of it all! We simply could not believe the startling incompetence, on so many levels, of the socialist government. We'd shake our heads in wonderment that common sense could be so elusive for these mindless bureaucrats. It was incomprehensible to us as Americans.
Not anymore. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the brave new world of the socialized government, both on the federal and (in most instances) the state level. Just as in Spain 40 years ago, simple answers elude when government minders are not required to exert more than 15 watts of intelligence at any given time.
Dear Reader, I offer you a challenge: If you can beat this example of inanity, I will reproduce it in a future column.
Early this year, I had some work performed on my property. As part of the permit exercise, I was commanded by Fairfax County (Virginia) to enter into an "agreement" putting up a "conservation escrow" for the "Chesapeake Bay Preservation Ordinance." Last week, a letter arrived from said county instructing me to send them a W-9 form, or else the said escrow check would not be released. Mailing directions were provided, which is nice. No explanation was given for what a W-9 form is.
So I had to call. Hand-to-God, after the endless maze of recorded instructions, I reached a live person. At least I think she was alive.
Me: I'm calling about your letter. It says I have to send a W-9 form. I have no idea what a W-9 form is.
Her: You download it from the IRS at IRS.gov.
Me: What does the IRS have to do with this? This is a conservation escrow check held by Fairfax County.
Her: They have the W-9 form.
Me: So what is a W-9 form?
Her: (Channeling her inner Nancy Pelosi) You have to download it to see. It will be explained to you.
Me: Can't you explain it to me?
Her: It is your address.
Me: It is my what?
Her: You print it off and fill out your address and send it to us to confirm your address.
Me: But...but... but...You know my address. You have my address. You sent this letter to me at my address, referencing a job completed at this address.
Her: But we need confirmation.
Me: (Dumbstruck) So ... how about I hereby confirm it.
Her: I'm sorry. We need the W-9 form, which you can download at IRS. gov and mail it to us in the ---
Click.
So beat that. In the meantime, watch for furloughed government workers. They know not what they do.
A w-9 is required anytime there is a check more than $600—it is stupid but it is a way the government tries to track every cent
Ah, this reminds me of the hoops we had to jump through when we were finishing up a tour at Naval Station, Rota, Spain, and wanted to bring our 3 pet cats back to the states.
Although they already had rabies shots and certificates, the fact that they were issued by an American vet invalidated them. So we had to go to another city to a Spanish vet who would vaccinate them and give them new certificates. The Spanish certificates, however, had to be dated at least a month before our departure. The vets were nice enough to place a suitable date on the certificates.
We also had to have health certificates and a variety of stamps from various offices. This all had to take place in another, further, city. One of the stamps had to be acquired in a bar. (Heaven only knows why official Spanish government business had to take place in a bar.) During our overnight stay in the city, the bar was never open, so we did not get that particular stamp.
On to the airport, where, thanks to a series of unforeseen events beyond our control, we were trying to board a flight on a different airline than originally planned, and we were late for it, so the plane was being held up at the gate for us. We were trying to run—with our infant son—to the gate. We were stopped by a La Guardia Civil officer, who took our cat paperwork and examined it. He was about to prevent us from going, while we were bouncing around nervously, afraid of missing our flight. Finally, he saw where we were trying to export cats, and said “Ah, gatos!” and let us through.
In New York, the customs officials didn’t even care that we were bringing cats into the country. At least back in the 1980s, one could freely import cats...
A few years ago I rolled over an IRA from one bank to another. But because of some kind of mix up $25 dollars did not make it into the IRA.
So that $25 dollars was put into a savings account connected to the IRA.
Because I do not want to add or take anything from that savings account it stays dormant.
Every few years I get a letter from the bank telling me since there has not been any activity in that account my $25 dollars will be turned over to the state (California gets all loose change).
I have to write back and explain it is not abandoned I just have not figured out how I am going to spend that $25 and would they be so kind as to hold on to it for awhile longer.
Two points, 1) I have other accounts at that bank that are quite active, and 2) they send me quarterly reports on the IRA account. They know what it is, they know why it was created they know where I am. Yet, the law is the law and they must threaten to take my $25 (now $25.02 with all the interest I have earned over the years, but don’t get me started on that subject)unless I can confirm I am still alive.
are we doomed?
unintended effects of laws
I am sick of it
I wish I could set up a practice just to straighten out this crap
there are a ton of bizarro child support stories, such as two dads supporting the same child
child has been adopted
adopt records sealed so biodad can’t prove it
and his check keeps getting dunned
your 25 dollar account story
so stupid
someone should dedicate themselves to getting these things fixed
maybe Kellog foundation could do grants for it
or Gates foundation
some foundation with more money than sense
Me: But...but... but...You know my address. You have my address. You sent this letter to me at my address, referencing a job completed at this address.
Her: But we need confirmation.
Me: (Dumbstruck) So ... how about I hereby confirm it.
LOL!!!
Ah, gatos!
This thread would be funny were it not sad.
I can beat that easily.
I worked for the local county govt. once.
We had a guy whose job it was to:
1) print the monthly reports
2) stack them in boxes.
3) take last months monthly reports to the shredder.
4) take the shredded reports to the incinerator.
5) repeat at (1) next month.
No one ever looked at these reports.
No one knew what was in them because he was not allowed to let anyone see them citing confidentiality rules.
(he was later busted for a $60,000 a year crack habit- but he KEPT HIS JOB)
He had no idea how to develop software. He called a meeting once to have the entire team debug a problem he was having for 3 weeks that he could not fix.
It turned out he was writing 100 characters into a space allocated for 80 - it took me 30 seconds to spot.
I needed an interface module he was working on- he spent 6 months on it and it still was not working- I finally wrote it myself in 3 hours. The did not use mine- they let him continue to work on it for 3 more months- he eventually stole mine and presented it as his.
He spent $50,000 of the end of the year “use it or lose it” budget spending spree on a 50 Meg disk array storage drive. It sat there for 3 years because no one could figure out how to turn it on.
When they finally did, you could buy 200 meg hard drives for $120. It is probably still sitting there - it is the size of a large microwave oven.
They admitted we were basically funding their XML interface programming so they could market themselves as having one. THERE WAS NO WAY TO RETURN MONEY *EVER* so they gave us free hours of tech support instead. (to move the 5 minutes of data from one table to another)
He spent every day running his private accounting business behind closed doors in his office. He had customers meet him in there.
It's not just in bureaucracies that government doesn't work. even if there is saintly super smart teacher in the government schools he/she can't teach the students to read or to learn anything of value. Government must be limited to only a very few functions at the federal , state, and local level. Government should never be involved in the economy , nor education , nor healthcare nor hardly anything, just military , border control, international issues and just to block the use of force by individuals or groups and to protect property rights. so only a few laws should be enforce by governments, “no murder” , no stealing , no trespassing , no assault. contracts and patents part and property rights disputes settled between parties in a court of law. So the only laws government should be allowed to write about is those that prevent the use of force , and those dealing with international issues, military, border control and that's it what i listed here. I don't see how the free market cannot do everything else people might need , to trade to , work , etc.
I might be able to top this.
I took my 17-year-old son to the DMV to get a state-issued ID. After standing in line for hours, I got to the clerk - a sow of a Somali woman — who told me — through an interpreter since she could not speak or understand English — that she could not issue a state-endorsed photo ID unless I could present a state-endorsed ID with a photo on it.
I failed to convince Amamdoulo Mahabuffalo (or whatever her name was) that my son was a legitimate US citzen.
Great story. And Spain is not the only bureaucratic spaghetti maze. I am sure most of Europe, if not all, is that way.
?
weird
They know exactly what they not do
I have heard those same numbers used before, I can believe it. I read multiple times that of the welfare budget that's about how much goes to the end-user (can't call them "the poor" any more with all the fraud), the rest is eaten by bureaucracy.
send that story to Bozell!
and now they have the EU, yet another layer of bossy bureaucracy and one of the things it does, I bet, is to make sure that member provinces keep making their bureaucracies even more dense
I did some website consulting for an organization whose website designer had gone off to some foreign country to find himself. I won’t go into how poorly the website was designed, but the really hilarious thing was when they downloaded me a copy of all the website files off their server (they wouldn’t give me access to the server), I found two completely separate websites that had nothing to do with this organization that were hijacking space on their server. They were shocked that their former employee would do such a thing.
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