I’m not answering my land line telephone anymore unless I can readily identify who the caller is. Despite registering our number on the National Do Not Call list, we are being pestered by solicitations and scam calls, the most recent of the latter being an admonishment to respond or face a Treasury Department enforcement action. The gall of these con artists is that, unlike callers who want to sell you something, they actually leave a message on your answering machine with a call back number. Brazen.
As I know I don’t owe any back taxes it is easy for me to dismiss these bullying intrusions into our household. I wonder, though, what impact these calls might have on citizens who have a balance due the federal government or those, such as the elderly or uneducated, who are uncertain. Might they think the bogus call is real and rush to send money to clear their accounts? Apparently, many have.
“This January, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) announced they have received reports of roughly 896,000 contacts since October 2013 and have become aware of over 5,000 victims who have collectively paid over $26.5 million as a result of the scam,” according to a February 2 Internal Revenue Service press release.
Problem is, the IRS is about to unleash private debt collectors on the populous, a provision dumped into the Highway Bill last December. So taxpayers, delinquent or not, may get more calls demanding payments. How to tell the bogus from the real, the wheat from the chaff, will be a task of biblical proportions. Some prayer might be in order.
Anyway, if you do need to reach me, call my cell phone. Or leave a message on my land line. As the saying goes, “Leave your number and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
Looking Back and Forward in Anger: Everyone seems to agree the mood of the public can be described as “angry,” an emotion being exploited by politicians who want enough votes to build walls to protect our American way of life, forgetting for a moment there is disagreement about what exactly constitutes our American way of life.
“One thing that baffles me is that many of the angriest voters are also those associated with communities of faith. By what logic can the devout commit the sin of anger, and resist the call of its antidotes, the virtues of forgiveness and understanding?”
Gosh, I wish I would have authored those lines. I commend to you the full text of an Op-Ed piece by Jennifer Finney Boylan in Thursday’s New York Times. Boylan is a professor of English at Barnard College (http://nyti.ms/20oLuy2).
BBC News asked a New Hampshire resident his thoughts on the primary election and the direction of the country. He responded it was important to get back to the values upon which our nation was founded. Asked to explain, he said one couldn’t do anything on one’s land without getting a permit. In other word, too much regulation.
Sounds simple enough. You’d think a landowner should be permitted to do as he pleases on and with his property. Until you realize that seemingly actions of personal choice, such as not putting a fence around a swimming pool as required in many communities, could have disastrous, often fatal, unintended consequences should a toddler fall into an unattended pool.
A few years ago a man in a Westchester community used his home to buy, sell and store mercury, a health risk not only to him but also to his neighbors. I could go on and on citing similar examples as to why regulations are necessary for the general good and welfare, but I’ll spare you.
No doubt there are rules that defy reason. Most regulations, however, were enacted to counter practices that hurt or had the potential to harm the population. We should treasure the intent and the value of such regulations, not dismiss them as as anti-American.
I’m also puzzled by the antipathy toward unions among much of the electorate, especially those who yearn for a return to yesteryear, to simpler times, to a time when income from manufacturing jobs forged a thriving middle class.
Do these people not realize union membership was a bulwark of those times? Who do they think negotiated better pay? better health care benefits? better retirement benefits? paid vacations? better working conditions? better education benefits? better safeguards against indiscriminate layoffs? Do they really believe employers, out of the goodness of their hearts, would provide workers with any but the most meager of salaries and benefits?
Sure, union leaders have at times abused their power. Overall, though, unions have benefitted society. The failure of current workers to recognize the value of unions goes hand in hand with the failure of women, men too, to appreciate the long-term commitment Hillary Clinton has had to equal opportunities, regardless of gender.
Here’s a contribution I recommend under the provocative title “All the terrible things Hillary Clinton has done — in one big list” (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/all-the-terrible-things-hillary-clinton-has-done-in-one-big-list-2016-02-04).
