He Shouldn't Be Using Food Stamps

Contrary to my tone and demeanor around here, there are very few people and/or things that I actually hate. Sure, I despise things. Many, many things annoy the holy hell out of me. But I don't hate a lot of things or a lot of people. This Leroy Fick guy in Michigan, though? Yeah, I might hate him.

Here's the story: Leroy won $2 million dollars in a Michigan state lottery game called "Make Me Rich". Interestingly, the show is hosted by Peter Knight who played Peter on "The Brady Bunch". Good to know that he could find work. But back to Mr. Fick. You know. The guy I might hate? Yeah, him.

After Mr. Fick won his two million dollars, it appears that he was given the option of having it paid to him in installments (which usually are spread out over a ridiculous number of years, like 20) or taking the lump sum payment. He took the lump sum payment. Now, while you get a big pile of cash all at once, they do take out a boat load of taxes. It ends up being right around half. So, Mr. Fick still won about a million dollars. He's a millionaire. On food stamps. Wait a minute. He what?

That's right. He still uses food stamps. According to WNEM, there is some sort of idiotic loophole in the federal regulations that are used to determine who is eligible to receive food stamps. For reasons which I cannot even begin to fathom, the system does not take into account your liquid assets when you are applying for aid. Soooo...they don't ask you if you have any money to spend? Thus, if you have money, it doesn't matter because they don't ask you that? What in the hell are the requirements based on? With that low of a standard, I can't imagine that ANYONE would not qualify. Who's idea was THAT?!

He's not breaking any laws by doing what he's doing. He's just a jackass, that's all. A rich jackass who doesn't want to pay for his own food even though he is perfectly able to pay for his own food. And he apparently doesn't care, as he told the reporter guy, "Well, I think it's fair because of the way that they took the taxes." They're supposed to take out taxes, you moron! That's how the system works! Just because they take taxes out doesn't mean that you don't have to pay for your own food when you have the means to do so! He also thinks that using the food stamps instead of his own money is the "prudent" thing to do. Uh, listen here, sir. If you were so worried about being "prudent" with your money, you shouldn't have been spending the pittance that you did have every month on the freaking lottery! Playing the lottery is the absolute opposite of freaking prudent!


The reporter who spoke to this asshat continues to probe into what other services Mr. Fick receives a(s someone who has about a million dollars) and Mr. Fick tells him that he is also on disability. (I could say that he looks like he's fine, but I know that there are things that can be wrong with a person that you can't see. For example, this guy has the moral compass of a jackrabbit in heat. You can't just tell that simply by looking at the guy.) And from his point of view, he thinks that all of this is ethical.

The reporter asks him what he thinks that a single mother with two jobs and working eighty hours a week would think about him and all of his money collecting from social services that are offered.
"If you're going to sit there and try to make me feel bad, you aren't going to do it. It ain't gonna happen. So you might as well just ship on out. Goodbye." Do you hate him yet? Because I'm pretty sure that I do.

If this guy is able to totally take advantage of this system with as much money as he has, you know that there are others doing it. The country is going freaking broke and yet we have a system that allows for loopholes like this one. The guy drives a convertible Audi and is on freaking food stamps! We are so effing screwed and doomed. We're scroomed.

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The information about the debacle that took place on Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day, known by some as the Christmas Crotchfire Incident, keeps trickling out and it keeps getting worse and worse. From what I can tell, and you're not going to like this anymore than I do, your chances of getting blown out of the sky by al-Qaida are about 50-50 if you're coming from one of the "countries of interest".

Listen, I don't have a problem with the system. From what I can tell (and it's not like I have access to all of the classified stuff because if I did, I'd probably hang myself), the system works just fine. It's a matter of finding competent and capable individuals that can work the system so that it does what it's supposed to do.

Let's start with Michael Leiter and John Brennan. Michael Leiter is the head of the NCTC. (NCTC stands for National Counterterrorism Center. I'm not sure why they threw in the "T" when it's not beginning the word, but I'm guessing that if you're going to be fighting terrorism, you have to have the initial in the acronym.) According to New York Daily News, Leiter was supposed to go on a "...ski vacation right after the Christmas Day bomber nearly blew up an airliner." Well, bummer that some guy with explosives strapped to his scrotum got in the way of that plan, eh? No one likes to change vacation plans, especially for Christmas, right? Well, right, but not so fast.

See, according to John Brennan, who is the top counterterror adviser, "Mike Leiter raised with me that he was in fact scheduled to go on leave to meet his son, and he asked me whether or not he should cancel that trip.And I said, 'Mike, no, you deserve this vacation. You need to be with your son.' " Wait a minute. What now?

The guy who is in charge of the anti-terrorism deal was given the OK to go off and go skiing right after this atrocity started to unfold? Are you kidding me? This is the guy who is leading the group, the NCTC, who are the ones who missed the gazillion clues that this guy was dangerous in the first place. And so since things clearly run so smoothly with him at the helm, there should be no problem in letting him take off for a few days of swooshing down the slopes while the rest of the Obama administration sorts through this mess, right?

Not only should that guy not have gone on his vacation, he shouldn't have asked if he could go. He should have just realized that one of the things about terrorism is that it is rather unpredictable and that your plans, even on Christmas, might get disrupted from time to time by some numbskull who can't set his groin on fire properly in order to take down a commercial jetliner. If this guy isn't going to stick around and deal with stuff when it happens, should he really be in that post? I think not. And the guy who told him he needed to go on vacation? Well, he is clearly incompetent and hasn't the slightest clue as to the meaning of the word "priority". Both of them should have been fired yesterday. At the latest.

Next up on the list of things that make me wonder how we've avoided another terrorist attack for as long as we have is the discovery that the Grundle Bomber was aboard Northwest Flight 253. Back to our friends at the NY Daily News for the information that "Homeland Security officials say they had flagged the suspect in the Christmas Day airline bombing attempt as someone who should go through additional security when he landed in the United States." Wow. Is that level of optimism common through all departments of Homeland Security? I was just wondering because that sentence makes it seem as if they assumed that he would land in the United States and would do so in tact (not in the bazillion little pieces scattered all over Detroit as he was planning).

Apparently, the way the system works is that the "Customs and Border Protection officials screen passengers against terrorist watch lists before international flights leave for the U.S." That seems reasonable. But then they "...check names against a different database while the flight is in the air." Um, wait. What is this second database and why is it different than the first? What good does it do anyone to check that second one when they're in the friggin' air already?! What say you check that first one and you check that second one before anyone gets on the plane? I don't get that at all. And of course "It was during this second check that officials flagged the alleged bomber."

Let's say that this nitwit had gotten away with this and had managed to set his loins aflame. How comforting do you think that would have been to the families of people on that plane to know that the guy was flagged while he was in the air? I'm guessing "not very". Not very comforting at all. That just seems (and I don't use this word very often) incredibly stupid.

And finally, as part of the changes that are going to be made after this incident, the LA Times informs us that "Obama also ordered the State Department to revoke visas when questions arise and to make it more difficult for people showing up in terrorism-related databases to receive visas." Wait, wait, WAIT! What is going on here?! Is everyone stupid?!

Let me get this straight. You're going to start revoking visas when there are questions?! You don't already do that?! Why in the bloody hell not? But before that gets answered, let's move on to the next one. Rather than not handing out visas when there are questions about people that show up, and I quote, "in terrorism-related databases" you're just going to make it "more difficult"? What does that mean? Only ask them the $2000 questions from Jeopardy! or something? These are people that are in, and I quote again in case you missed it the first three times I screeched about it, "terrorism-related databases" and all you're going to do is make it "more difficult". Not impossible; just difficult. I think we've finally come completely off the rails here.

That same article in the times (that I linked to above) also mentions in regard to the CIA that "...the agency gave itself a new 48-hour deadline for disseminating information on suspected extremists." A 48-hour deadline? To spread out the information? How in the hell long could the possibly need? And what, pray tell, what the "deadline" before this new rule? I can go into a Barnes & Noble bookstore and give them my phone number to receive my member discount and they can pull up in their database every damn book that I have bought from them since the beginning of time. Do you know how long it takes them to do that? Once the rhesus monkey working the register can get the phone number entered correctly (usually on the third try), I believe it takes approximately a third of a second for that information to pop up on their screen. That's at freaking Barnes & Noble. They're able to disseminate the information in their database rather rapidly, yet the CIA needs to put themselves on a strict 48-hour deadline when dealing with, not recently purchased reading materials, but terrorists. We are doomed.

I listen to this local, Northern California morning radio talk show called Armstrong and Getty. You'd like 'em. Trust me. (Download their podcast over yonder there at iTunes and check them out. They're hilarious and brilliant.) There's a term that they have coined which is a combination of being screwed and being doomed at the same time. They call it "scroomed". I am here to tell you that if this is how things are working in the intelligence departments and the counterterrorism departments around this country, we are all scroomed. Scroomed and scroomed hard.

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So Much For Those Retention Bonuses

In what was quite possibly one of the worst justifications for giving the very folks who have run AIG into the ground a "bonus", Edward M. Liddy said that the "bonuses" were necessary if AIG was to retain "the best and the brightest" employees. I pointed out the other day that clearly AIG does not have "the best and the brightest"! If the current state of AIG is any indication of what "the best and the brightest" can do, I'd really like to give the "not bad and half witted" or "the worst and the dumbest" a shot at running the show over there. You know, just so we can really see the difference between the two because really, at the point, I don't think there is a difference.

But that aside, the taxpayers are getting dry shaved on this one for sure. My vision of our future razor burn stems from an article in the New York Times that ran on Tuesday. The article began: "73 employees were paid more than $1 million in the newly minted bonuses at the insurance giant American International Group, according to Andrew M. Cuomo, the attorney general of New York." Um, holy crap, what was that? 73 people? Who? Who are they? I want names! Actually, I want heads, but you have to start with a name before you get the head. The name IS the head!

"Mr. Cuomo did not name the bonus recipients..." Um, holy crap, what was that? He's not naming them? But I need heads! I mean names! I need names!! WHY is he not naming them? Maybe (but not likely) it's because he's busy rambling off stunning figures such as:

• The highest bonus was $6.4 million
  
• 6 other employees received more than $4 million
  
• Another 15 people received more than $2 million
  
• Another 51 people received $1 million to $2 million

Holy crap. What?

• The top ten bonus recipients received a combined total of $42 million
  
• 22 individuals received $2 million or more.
  
• Those 22 combined received more than $72 million
• 73 received more than $1 million

How's that dry shaving feel? Burn yet? Ass chafed enough? No? Not quite? Perhaps this shall do it:

• 11 of those who received $1 million or more are no longer working at A.I.G.
  
• That includes one who received $4.6 million.

Wait a minute! 11 are no longer working at the company?! But....according to AIG, they were "the best and the brightest"! According to AIG, they had to get that kind of money in order to stay at the company.

Hey, how is this even possible? They received that money on Sunday! SUNDAY! It's Wednesday! That article in The New York Times was wrote on Tuesday! They quit before Tuesday?! I don't think they did.

You folks are clearly not one of "the best and the brightest" liars out there. That was a poor attempt at lying at best, really. :::: sigh :::: What to do? What to do? Oh, well! Here's a million dollars anyway! Nice try! Can't win 'em all! See ya Monday! Or not! Whatever! Here's your money! (Hey, that's how it goes at AIG. Are they hiring?)

And the reason the Mr. Cuomo is not naming the folks who received their undeserved bonus is because AIG won't tell him. Shocking, I know. Another thing that you may or may not find shocking is that when AIG said that they had to pay the bonuses because they were contractually obligated to do so and that they had consulted with lawyers who told them that, they only consulted with their own lawyers. Not outside counsel, not the Treasury, their own lawyers. Then they told Tim Geithner that and he basically said, "Bummer."

Until we get the names of the other heads, I'm perfectly OK with Tim's for now. Tim, you just took what they said about the legality of it all at face value? You didn't have someone else, someone who, perhaps, didn't work for AIG look at things? Where are you and your outrage? Why is Andrew Cuomo suddenly the guy leading the charge? Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled that Andrew Cuomo is on top of this one. That's the most sensible thing I've heard that's being done about this whole mess probably in the past year. But Tim, you're Secretary of the Treasury!! Well, for now. Who knows? Anyway....

So now what? You're not going to believe me when I tell you, so I don't know if it matters. But please, try to think of the irony in the next step. Please try to see the humor (as if it were not actually happening in real life). Because if you can do those two things, it might prevent you from hanging yourself. Might. I make no promises. Here's what the article says: "....the White House said on Monday that the Treasury would write new requirements about the bonus money in the next $30 billion that it provides to the insurance giant."

Oh. My. God.

The NEXT $30 BILLION?!?!?! Are you effing kidding me?!!? That we GIVE them?!?! AGAIN?!?! MORE??!?!?! And what's with the writing of "new requirements?!" From what I can tell, there weren't any old requirements! From what I can tell there weren't any requirements at all! Shouldn't that read "would write requirements about the bonus money"??

I can't believe that is their solution! To give them more money! What in the hell do these brainstorming sessions with the White House folks sound like?? I'm picturing Tim Geithner at the head of a large table, glistening from a sound buffing with a gallon of Pledge, surrounded by people who are trying to look like they're paying attention, but they're really checking their Blackberries, updating their Facebook page, watching a water skiing squirrel on YouTube and sending obscene Twitter tweets. They don't care what Tim is saying, but I think it has to be something along the lines of:

"Boy, they sure got us this time, didn't they? Well, let's just see them try that with the next round of money we give them. What's the score? AIG: 3; White House: 0 ? We'll get 'em. Somehow. What are we doing different this time? Is there a strongly worded memo? I think we should try a strongly worded memo. Oh! And have Barack give that speech about how he'll be disappointed if they do this again! Yeah, we'll shame them into not screwing us. And "or else"! There has to be an "or else!" in there somewhere. What's that? Oh. No, I don't really know "or else" what? But it doesn't matter. That'll scare them so bad that they wouldn't dare do that again! We won't even have to think about "or else" because it'll be fine. OK, so we have the strongly worded memo, the "or else!" and the disappointment speech made with a stern look with just a touch of finger pointing. That should do 'er. Whew! I'm beat. Who's up for beer pong?"

Andrew Cuomo sent a letter to Barney Frank, the Chairman of the House Committee of Financial Services which detailed what his office has uncovered in the workings of AIG and encouraged them to address the issue. My question is: What in the hell does the House Committee of Financial Services do? Because from what I can tell, none of these House Committees do anything until after something has fallen apart and even then all they do is bark irrelevant questions at them during some faux hearing for the purposes of appearing outraged. If they were truly outraged, they would start implementing some preventative procedures instead of always showing up for loss assessment.

You know, at the beginning of all of this, before AIG received any money at all, we were told by Henry Paulson, et al, that we had to bail them out and we had to do it soon otherwise it would be an utter disaster. He stressed repeatedly that it had to be done immediately lest we face our imminent doom. About 6 weeks later, they got their money. To my knowledge and recollection, there was not "imminent doom" in the interim. My point is, what's the hurry? Slow down there, cowboy. There needs to be a little bit of time invested into figuring out what could generate the least amount of waste. There also needs to be not a little, but a lot of effort invested as well. Sometimes things take way too long, but it's only because people are effing around. Effort. The folks who are doling out this cash need to act like they give a flying F about it, because they don't. And the Obama administration needs to get over themselves and start walking their walk because I'm tired of hearing them talk their talk. Pipe down and whip out some of that 'change' that we distinctly remember being promised. Because all of this seems like the same incompetence that we've grown sadly accustomed to.

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