I turned in my Read 100 list to the Kanawha County library earlier this week, and obtained my “gold” (yellow) library card. I realize that this is a pretty minor accomplishment, but I’m still very pleased.
I’m less pleased about the fact that my Xbox 360 died, again, but rumors that this fact had anything to do with my completion of the Read 100 challenge are absolutely incorrect.
The usual meme is that conservatives (on this topic, anyone who disapproves of the way our government fails to deal with illegal immigration can be considered “conservative”) are racists and nationalists who think less of people who aren’t from America. The problem with this meme, of course, is that most people who have an issue with illegal immigration, myself included, are thrilled to see articles like this one:
The 33-year-old was one of 79 people who gathered Monday at the Robert C. Byrd Federal Courthouse in Charleston to become naturalized citizens of the United States.
Perez was the only person from Belgium in attendance.
Others were from Ethiopia, Mexico, Iran, the Philippines, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan, Republic of China, Romania, Bulgaria, Egypt, Russia, India, Taiwan, Jamaica, Peru, Kenya, Greece, Canada, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Venezuela, Germany, Dominican Republic, Australia, Ireland, the Bahamas and Morocco.
This is a great story, but I have to wonder: are these ceremonies rarer than I thought, or was it just a really slow news day?
West Virginia State Auditor Glen Gainer makes the somewhat incomprehensible argument that because the state paid nearly two million dollars to someone, the two firms to whom the money was actually owed should just get over it:
At a news conference Monday, Gainer said the state has not lost any money because it acted in good faith when it paid the companies.
“My position is, the vendors are the ones who are out,” he said. “We’re not paying the vendors again.”
The state made the payments in March and April, after the perpetrator sent letters allegedly from the two companies requesting that payments be sent to new bank accounts. The letters included all documentation required for payment, including tax identification numbers.
Let me repeat that middle paragraph for you. “‘My position is, the vendors are the ones who are out,’ [Gainer] said. ‘We’re not paying the vendors again.’” Um, no, Mr. Gainer, you won’t be paying the vendors again, because you didn’t pay them the first time.
Let’s reverse this scenario for a minute. Let’s say that I get a letter on official looking letterhead telling me that my property taxes should be paid using a cashier’s check and should be mailed to Lagos, Nigeria. Suppose that I’m a pretty trusting sort of person, so I mail the money off to Lagos. Six months later, the state comes to my door demanding that I hand over my car, since I didn’t pay the government enforced rent taxes.
Does anyone really think that the state would honestly accept the argument that I’d already paid the money and that I wouldn’t pay it again? Heck, does anyone even think that Mr. Gainer himself would accept that argument? Of course not.
Unless Mr. Gainer would really be perfectly okay with the idea that the state wouldn’t have to pay him if it accidentally sent his check to someone else, then what Mr. Gainer’s words reveal is that he believes what far too many others who work in government jobs believe. He believes that these corporations and all the people who work for them are subjects. He believes that they… that we should simply cower and accept what Big Brother decides that we should get.
Of course, if someone at these companies is responsible, those individuals should be punished, and the State should make every reasonable attempt to try to recoup the loss of this money. That does not mean that the State should simply refuse to pay the money to these companies.
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Since the move, I’ve slacked a bit on my reading, and I’ve definitely slacked on logging the books I’ve read for the Read 100 challenge. Since my last post, I’ve read:
That puts me at eight books so far this year, and we’re just over two months into the year. I have 92 books to go in ten months, so I need to average 9.2 books a month… I’ve got to more than double my pace if I want to get this done.
The good news is that I’ve been reading a lot less than normal because of the move and some stuff at work; once that’s over, I should be back up to normal and catch back up to where I should be.
I hope.
We moved last weekend, and the preparations for the move (not to mention the move itself) kind of interfered with my Read 100 challenge. In order to get my pace back up where it needs to be, I picked up a couple of Nero Wolfe novels (by Rex Stout). I finished one this morning, Please Pass the Guilt, and just started Before Midnight.
I’ve got a lot of blog reading to catch up on in addition to reading in general, so I’m off.