Your tax dollars at work... or not.

Just when I though money was at it's tightest, I get this notice in the mail for an unpaid parking ticket. These are not uncommon, considering the total lack of available parking at my workplace. You have to park in the garage two blocks away with ten-hour meters. If that's full, you have no choice but to hunt down one of the curbside spots with a two hour meter and hope you get a break and get out there before the parking Nazi does. Parking citations are completely commonplace.

I had paid off a slew of these little suckers back in November. I hadn't gotten one since (by pure luck or grace or God knows what). Imagine my shock when I received a notice via mail that my plates were suspended for non-payment of a citation from October! I was quite pissed. How on earth could that be, when I had paid them all a month later than the citation was dated?

Mind you, the longer the citation goes unpaid, the higher the amount of the fine. I was not a happy camper. This little doozy would leave me with ten dollars to my name. Lovely. I have my second-oldest's birthday party on Saturday, and this is the last thing I need right now.

Instead of rushing right over to (throttle) pay the clerk for the fine, I called to find out what the heck had happened. It took her a minute to find it. When she finally did, she told me it was indeed paid, but that the system was a little slow. A LITTLE SLOW?!? I laughed my butt off. Three months slow?! She then told me that this has been happening a lot lately, and they'd gotten a new computer system (doesn't that seem to be the general excuse for just about every flaw in every professional organization? Just how often do they get new systems, and what idiot is picking out these crappy computers?) Well at least I don't have a fine to pay.

Just another example of our wonderful government at work. Thousands of dollars spent on wrenches and toilet seats, but heaven forbid they use it for any sort of accuracy or anything. The true reasons for our multi-trillion dollar debts become quite clear.

It amazes me that these ridiculously uninformed and closed-minded politicians can sit in their palaces of pure oblivion and vote themselves raises and other frivolous absurdities, all the while entirely unaware of the true needs of the inhabitants of the very country they are sworn to serve.

Speaking of those who serve the country, it is absolute bullshit all the money these morons put into the military "for the betterment of our beloved soldiers". Oh, bite my ass. Have you ever seen the paycheck of a soldier? In any branch of the military? I am here to tell you, it ain't the dream job they'd like you to think.

There is a man in my life (and a particularly special one) who has been in the military for nearly twenty years. His "big paycheck" would be about three times that if he worked in the civilian world. That enormous monstrosity of a retirement would be enough to cover a mortgage. That, to me, is a travesty.

One would think that the money going to the military would include at least a little toward the increase of morale by heightening their standard of living just a tad. It's sickening, the number of families in the military on welfare.

Not that it does a damn thing to bitch about it. Our government is so irretrievably screwed up it would take more than a couple of raises or passed bills to fix it, quite honestly.